Today Lonnie will be taxing half of his gear up to the 12,300ft camp. He will then return to the 11,200ft camp tonight and then carrying the remainder of his gear back up to 12,300ft tomorrow.
We received coordinates at about 2pm today with Lonnie’s location at 12,300ft where he will also be collecting rock samples. These samples are for scientist Dragos Zaharescu from the Biosphere 2 project at the University of Arizona.
Dupre is partnering with Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation to collect microbe samples; helping to gain unique insights into the functioning of extreme environments.
“The goal of the data collection is to help scientists understand how nutrient cycling is affected by climate change. Basically, this means we can begin to understand how climate change will affect the production of living matter in extreme environments.” -Lonnie Dupre
Knowledge of this process is also likely to reveal vital clues about the evolution of microbes-rock interaction in these extreme boundary environments and its potential response to alterations in the environmental equilibrium such as climate change.
We will be in correspondence with Lonnie at some point tomorrow evening when he returns to his 12,300ft camp and will then update with details.
UPDATE: Lonnie left a voice message for us at 6pm.