Lonnie Dupre, welcome to our world!

As someone who has endured stormy weather high on Mount McKinley, I have some idea of what you went through up there. But hey buddy, you didn't need to go so far to get the big, wild Alaska experience.  You could have saved on the cost of a Talkeetna air taxi and rented a home on the Anchorage Hillside for the winter. It's been a lot like McKinley here, without the snow cave.

Think of it this way: All of the experience, less of the suffering.

One hundred mph winds, sideways blowing snow and long, dark nights -- it doesn't matter whether you're on McKinley or Mount Flattop above Anchorage. Flattop is the most-climbed peak in the 49th state, but not in these conditions. You could have it all to yourself today. The National Weather Service's mesonet reported gusts to 83 mph at Glen Alps near the base of Flattop at noon Tuesday.

As McKinley climbers know, an 83 mph gust will pick you up and body-slam you. That happened to a climbing friend a couple times on the way into McKinley's 14,200-foot campground. He looked like a big salmon flopping around on the other end of the climbing rope. We were luckier than you. It was the climbing season, and it was good to finally struggle into the basin and see all those tents.

It's comforting to think there are fellow humans who might help you out, even if not a one of them emerged from a tent while we were digging for our lives to get a hole deep enough so we could pitch our own tent safe from the wind. Nonetheless, I wouldn't want to be up there alone. I feel for what you went through. It's much nicer to sit here 1,100 feet above Anchorage in a warm house worrying about little except whether the roof will blow off in a storm.

I'm confident it won't. The old log house has already withstood winds over 100 mph this winter, so 70 or 80 mph gusts are less of a worry. And the National Weather Service is assuring residents it won't get worse than those "gusts 80 to 100 mph.'' Hurricane-force winds begin at 73 mph. That's not quite enough to pick me and flop me down. I'm a fat guy. Seventy-three mph usually just staggers me, although I do once remember falling on my face once. I was taking the dogs for a walk, crazily enough, and leaning so far into the wind to stay on my feet that when the gust suddenly stopped, I just went "plop.''

Ah, the joys of Alaska.

Some here in the North think Dupre’s attempt to climb McKinley in the heart of winter is a shameless publicity stunt. They have probably never been on McKinley, nor outdoors much in Alaska’s season of the dark, cold and snow. Some of them express their opinions at the end of this story from the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. One of them thinks you're a "two-time loser" because the conditions on the mountain have turned you back again.

He (or was it a she, you never know with these Internet comments) has probably never been in a situation where it was necessary to shovel snow every few hours to keep from being buried. Maybe he, or she, should move to Cordova or Valdez for this winter of Mother Nature's discontent. They were digging like coal miners in Cordova to save their quaint little fishing village and couldn't quite keep up. They finally had to call in the Alaska National Guard. I wonder how many of those Guardsmen ever thought they'd end up shoveling snow to save lives?

But I'm sure you can understand.

Me, I'm just glad you made it back to Talkeetna alive.