Lonnie Dupre of Grand Marais and his climbing partner Pascale Marceau of Canada reported Monday that they have successfully reached the top of Mt. Wood in Canada's Yukon Territory.
The team is the first ever to reach the summit in winter and Marceau is the first woman to ever make an ascent of the subarctic peak that tops out at 15,192 feet.
"The beauty of such firsts lies in their unknowns. There is no standard route. There are no prescribed landing zones and the condition of the glaciers is always changing," Marceau said.
Despite the odds, the brutal winds, heavily crevassed ice fields and extreme cold, the team spent 13 hours making their way to Mt. Wood's summit.
"The weather is bad and the descent that we have ahead of us now is the most technical part of the climb," Dupre reported from 11,000 feet to the team's ground crew.
