Denali

Geology and features

Denali is a granitic pluton, mostly pink quartz monzonite, lifted by tectonic pressure from the subduction of the Pacific plate beneath the North American plate; at the same time, the sedimentary material above and around the mountain was stripped away by erosion. The forces that lifted Denali also caused many deep earthquakes in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. The Pacific Plate is seismically active beneath Denali, a tectonic region that is known as the "McKinley cluster".

Structural geology

The high topography of Denali is related to the complex structural relationships created by the right-lateral Denali Fault and Denali Fault Bend. The Denali Fault is caused by stresses created by the low-angle subduction of the Yakutat microplate underneath Alaska. The Denali Fault Bend is characterized as a gentle restraining bend. The Denali Fault Bend represents a curvature in the Denali Fault that is approximately 75 km long. This curvature creates what is known as a "space problem". As the right-lateral movement along the Denali Fault continues, high compressional forces created at the fault bend essentially push the crust up in a vertical fashion. The longer the crust stays within the restraining bend, the higher the topography will be. Several active normal faults north of the restraining bend have recently been mapped with slip rates of approximately 2–6 mm/year. These normal faults help to accommodate the unusual curvature of the restraining bend.

Elevation

Denali has a summit elevation of 20,310 feet (6,190 m) above sea level, making it the highest peak in North America and the northernmost mountain above 19,685 feet (6,000 m) elevation in the world. Measured from base to peak at some 18,000 ft (5,500 m), it is among the largest mountains situated entirely above sea level. Denali rises from a sloping plain with elevations from 1,000 to 3,000 ft (300 to 910 m), for a base-to-peak height of 17,000 to 19,000 ft (5,000 to 6,000 m). By comparison, Mount Everest rises from the Tibetan Plateau at a much higher base elevation. Base elevations for Everest range from 13,800 ft (4,200 m) on the south side to 17,100 ft (5,200 m) on the Tibetan Plateau, for a base-to-peak height in the range of 12,000 to 15,300 ft (3,700 to 4,700 m). Denali's base-to-peak height is little more than half the 33,500 ft (10,200 m) of the volcano Mauna Kea, which lies mostly under water.

Geography of the mountain

Denali has two significant summits: the South Summit is the higher one, while the North Summit has an elevation of 19,470 ft (5,934 m) and a prominence of approximately 1,270 ft (387 m). The North Summit is sometimes counted as a separate peak (see e.g., fourteener) and sometimes not; it is rarely climbed, except by those doing routes on the north side of the massif.

Five large glaciers flow off the slopes of the mountain. The Peters Glacier lies on the northwest side of the massif, while the Muldrow Glacier falls from its northeast slopes. Just to the east of the Muldrow, and abutting the eastern side of the massif, is the Traleika Glacier. The Ruth Glacier lies to the southeast of the mountain, and the Kahiltna Glacier leads up to the southwest side of the mountain. With a length of 44 mi (71 km), the Kahiltna Glacier is the longest glacier in the Alaska Range.

Naming

The Koyukon Athabaskans who inhabit the area around the mountain have, for centuries, referred to the peak as Dinale or Denali. The name is based on a Koyukon word for 'high' or 'tall'. During the Russian ownership of Alaska, the common name for the mountain was Bolshaya Gora (Russian: Большая Гора; bolshaya 'big'; gora 'mountain'), which is the Russian translation of Denali. It was briefly called Densmore's Mountain in the late 1880s and early 1890s after Frank Densmore, a gold prospector who was the first non-native Alaskan to reach the base of the mountain.

William A. Dickey

In 1896, gold prospector William Dickey named it McKinley as political support for then-presidential candidate William McKinley, who became president the following year.

One, however, W. A. Dickey, of a different type from the rest, recognized the surpassing height of the peak and its geographic import and gave it the name Mount McKinley. His exploration in 1896 was probably one of the first extensive journeys in this district since that of the Russian Malakoff in 1834. With three other men he ascended Susitna River to the trading station at the head of the delta; then constructed boats of whipsawed lumber and continued his journey up the main Susitna to the mouth of Indian Creek. From this place he explored a part of the upper canyon of the Susitna and also made a journey westward to the Chulitna, reaching the foot of the glacier which discharges into this river and has its source on the slopes of Mount McKinley. It was after this journey that he published his description of the mountain, in which he named it and stated its altitude as over 20,000 feet. He told the writer that he had no instruments, but made his estimate, which has proved to be remarkably accurate, with careful consideration of the atmospheric conditions, as well as of the probable distance to the base of the peak. In 1897 he made a second trip into this region, with one companion, and extended his previous explorations. He was the first to call attention to the great lowland drained by Tokichitna River and to the low divide which separates it from the Kuskokwim drainage, later explored by Spurr, Herron, and the writer.

The United States formally recognized the name Mount McKinley after President Woodrow Wilson signed the Mount McKinley National Park Act of February 26, 1917. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared the north and south peaks of the mountain the "Churchill Peaks", in honor of British statesman Winston Churchill. The Alaska Board of Geographic Names changed the state name of the mountain to Denali in 1975, which was how it was referred to locally. However, a request in 1975 from the Alaska state legislature to the United States Board on Geographic Names to do the same at the federal level was blocked by Ohio congressman Ralph Regula, whose district included McKinley's home town of Canton.

On August 28, 2015, just ahead of a presidential visit to Alaska, the Barack Obama administration changed the mountain's official federal name to Denali, bringing it in line with the Alaska Geographic Board's designation. U.S. secretary of the interior Sally Jewell said the change had been "a long time coming". The renaming of the mountain received praise from Alaska's senior U.S. senator, Republican Lisa Murkowski, who had previously introduced legislation to accomplish the name change, but it drew criticism from several politicians from President McKinley's home state of Ohio, such as Governor John Kasich, U.S. senator Rob Portman, U.S. House speaker John Boehner, and Representative Bob Gibbs, who described Obama's action as "constitutional overreach" because he said an act of Congress was required to rename the mountain. The Alaska Dispatch News reported that the secretary of the interior has authority under federal law to change geographic names when the Board of Geographic Names does not act on a naming request within a "reasonable" period of time. Jewell told the Alaska Dispatch News that "I think any of us would think that 40 years is an unreasonable amount of time."

History

The Koyukon Athabaskans, living in the Yukon, Tanana and Kuskokwim basins, were the first Native Americans with access to the flanks of the mountain. A British naval captain and explorer, George Vancouver, is the first European on record to have sighted Denali, when he noted "distant stupendous mountains" while surveying the Knik Arm of the Cook Inlet on May 6, 1794. The Russian explorer Lavrenty Zagoskin explored the Tanana and Kuskokwim rivers in 1843 and 1844, and was likely the first European to sight the mountain from the other side.

William Dickey, a New Hampshire-born resident of Seattle, Washington, who had been digging for gold in the sands of the Susitna River, wrote, after his returning from Alaska, an account in the New York Sun that appeared on January 24, 1897. His report drew attention with the sentence "We have no doubt that this peak is the highest in North America, and estimate that it is over 20,000 feet (6,100 m) high." Until then, Mount Logan in Canada's Yukon Territory was believed to be the continent's highest point. Though later praised for his estimate, Dickey admitted that other prospector parties had also guessed the mountain to be over 20,000 feet (6,100 m). These estimates were confirmed in 1898 by the surveyor Robert Muldrow, who measured its elevation as 20,300 feet (6,200 m).

On November 5, 2012, the United States Mint released a twenty-five cent piece depicting Denali National Park. It is the fifteenth of the America the Beautiful Quarters series. The reverse features a Dall sheep with the peak of Denali in the background.

Climbing history

During the summer of 1902 scientist Alfred Brooks explored the flanks of the mountain as a part of an exploratory surveying party conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey. The party landed at Cook Inlet in late May, then traveled east, paralleling the Alaska Range, before reaching the slopes of Denali in early August. Camped on the flank of the mountain on August 3, Brooks noted later that while "the ascent of Mount McKinley had never been part of our plans", the party decided to delay one day so "that we might actually set foot on the slopes of the mountain". Setting off alone, with good weather, on August 4, Brooks aimed to reach a 10,000 feet (3,048 m) shoulder. At 7,500 feet (2,286 m), Brooks found his way blocked by sheer ice and, after leaving a small cairn as a marker, descended. After the party's return, Brooks co-authored a "Plan For Climbing Mt McKinley", published in National Geographic magazine in January 1903, with fellow party-member and topographer D. L. Raeburn, in which they suggested that future attempts at the summit should approach from the north, not the south. The report received substantial attention, and within a year, two climbing parties declared their intent to summit.

During the early summer of 1903, Judge James Wickersham, then of Eagle, Alaska, made the first recorded attempt to climb Denali, along with a party of four others. The group attempted to get as close to the mountain as possible via the Kantishna river by steamer, before offloading and following Chitsia Creek with a poling boat, mules and backpacks, a route suggested to them by Tanana Athabaskan people they met along the way. The party received further navigational assistance at Anotoktilon, an Athabaskan hunting camp, where residents gave the group detailed directions to reach the glaciers at the foot of Denali. On reaching the mountain, the mountaineers set up base camp on the lower portion of Peters Glacier. Aiming for the northwest buttress of Denali's north peak, they attempted to ascend directly; however, crevasses, ice fall and the lack of a clear passage caused them to turn and attempt to follow a spur via Jeffery Glacier where they believed they could see a way to the summit. After a dangerous ascent, at around 10,000 feet (3,048 m), Wickersham found that the route did not connect as it had appeared from below, instead discovering "a tremendous precipice beyond which we cannot go. Our only line of further ascent would be to climb the vertical wall of the mountain at our left, and that is impossible." This wall, now known as the Wickersham Wall, juts 15,000 feet (4,572 m) upwards from the glacier to the north peak of Denali. Because of the route's history of avalanche danger, it was not successfully climbed until 1963.

Accidents

From 1947 to 2018 in the United States "2,799 people were reported to be involved in mountaineering accidents" and 11% of these accidents occurred on Denali. Of these 2,799 accidents, 43% resulted in death and 8% of these deaths occurred on Denali.

Timeline

1896–1902: Surveys by Robert Muldrow, George Eldridge, Alfred Brooks.

1913: First ascent, by Hudson Stuck, Harry Karstens, Walter Harper, and Robert Tatum via the Muldrow Glacier route.

1932: Second ascent, by Alfred Lindley, Harry Liek, Grant Pearson, Erling Strom. (Both peaks were climbed.)

1947: Barbara Washburn becomes the first woman to reach the summit while her husband Bradford Washburn becomes the first person to summit twice.

1951: First ascent of the West Buttress Route, led by Bradford Washburn.

1954: First ascent of the very long South Buttress Route by George Argus, Elton Thayer (died on descent), Morton Wood, and Les Viereck. Deteriorating conditions behind the team pushed them to make the first traverse of Denali. The Great Traleika Cirque, where they camped just below the summit, was renamed Thayer Basin, in honor of the fallen climber.

1954 (May 27) First ascent via Northwest Buttress to North Peak by Fred Beckey, Donald McLean, Charles Wilson, Henry Meybohm, and Bill Hackett

1959: First ascent of the West Rib, now a popular, mildly technical route to the summit.

1961: First ascent of the Cassin Ridge, named for Riccardo Cassin and the best-known technical route on the mountain. The first ascent team members are: Riccardo Cassin, Luigi Airoldi, Luigi Alippi, Giancarlo Canali, Romano Perego, and Annibale Zucchi.

1962: First ascent of the southeast spur, team of six climbers (C. Hollister, H. Abrons, B. Everett, Jr., S. Silverstein, S. Cochrane, and C. Wren)

1963: A team of six climbers (W. Blesser, P. Lev, R. Newcomb, A. Read, J. Williamson, F. Wright) made the first ascent of the East Buttress. The summit was attained via Thayer Basin and Karstens Ridge. See AAJ 1964.

Weather station

The Japanese Alpine Club installed a meteorological station on a ridge near the summit of Denali at an elevation of 18,733 feet (5,710 m) in 1990. In 1998, this weather station was donated to the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. In June 2002, a weather station was placed at the 19,000-foot (5,800 m) level. This weather station was designed to transmit data in real-time for use by the climbing public and the science community. Since its establishment, annual upgrades to the equipment have been performed with instrumentation custom built for the extreme weather and altitude conditions. This weather station is the third-highest weather station in the world.

The weather station recorded a temperature of −75.5 °F (−59.7 °C) on December 1, 2003. On the previous day of November 30, 2003, a temperature of −74.4 °F (−59.1 °C) combined with a wind speed of 18.4 miles per hour (29.6 km/h) to produce a North American record windchill of −118.1 °F (−83.4 °C).

Even in July, this weather station has recorded temperatures as low as −22.9 °F (−30.5 °C) and windchills as low as −59.2 °F (−50.7 °C).

Historical record

According to the National Park Service, in 1932 the Liek-Lindley expedition recovered a self-recording minimum thermometer left near Browne's Tower, at about 15,000 feet (4,600 m), on Denali by the Stuck-Karstens party in 1913. The spirit thermometer was calibrated down to −95 °F (−71 °C), and the lowest recorded temperature was below that point. Harry J. Liek took the thermometer back to Washington, D.C. where it was tested by the United States Weather Bureau and found to be accurate. The lowest temperature that it had recorded was found to be approximately −100 °F (−73 °C). Another thermometer was placed at the 15,000-foot (4,600 m) level by the U.S. Army Natick Laboratory, and was there from 1950 to 1969. The lowest temperature recorded during that period was also −100 °F (−73 °C).

Subpeaks and nearby mountains

Besides the North Summit mentioned above, other features on the massif which are sometimes included as separate peaks are:

South Buttress, 15,885 feet (4,842 m); mean prominence: 335 feet (102 m)

East Buttress high point, 14,730 feet (4,490 m); mean prominence: 380 feet (120 m)

East Buttress, most topographically prominent point, 14,650 feet (4,470 m); mean prominence: 600 feet (180 m)

Browne Tower, 14,530 feet (4,430 m); mean prominence: 75 feet (23 m)

Nearby peaks include:

Mount Crosson

Mount Foraker

Mount Silverthrone

Mount Hunter

Mount Huntington

Mount Dickey

The Moose's Tooth

Taxonomic honors

denaliensis

Ceratozetella denaliensis (formerly Cyrtozetes denaliensis Behan-Pelletier, 1985) is a species of moss mite in the family Mycobatidae

Magnoavipes denaliensis Fiorillo et al., 2011 (literally "bird with large feet found in Denali") is a Magnoavipes ichnospecies of bird footprint from the Upper Cretaceous of Alaska and was a large heron-like bird (as large as a sandhill crane) with three toes and toe pads.

denali

Cosberella denali (Fjellberg, 1985) is a springtail in the genus Cosberella.

Proclossiana aphirape denali Klots, 1940 is a Boloria butterfly subspecies in the family Nymphalidae.

Symplecta denali (Alexander, 1955) is a species of crane fly in the family Limoniidae.

Tipula denali Alexander, 1969 is a species of crane fly in the family Tipulidae.

denalii

Erigeron denalii A. Nelson, 1945 or Denali fleabane is an Erigeron fleabane species.

mckinleyensis or mackinleyensis

Erebia mackinleyensis (Gunder, 1932) or Mt. McKinley alpine is a butterfly species of the subfamily Satyrinae of family Nymphalidae.

Oeneis mackinleyensis Dos Passos 1965 or Oeneis mckinleyensis Dos Passos 1949 is a butterfly species of the subfamily Satyrinae of family Nymphalidae (synonym of Oeneis bore)

Uredo mckinleyensis Cummins 1952 (sometimes spelled Uredo mackinleyensis) is a rust fungus species.

In popular culture

In 2019, American educational animated series Molly of Denali premiered on PBS and CBC Kids. The show depicts the daily life and culture of Molly, a young Alaskan Native girl and vlogger. The animated series has received acclaim for its representation of Indigenous Alaskan culture.

In the serialized speculative fiction multimedia narrative 17776, a cannon is built on top of Denali which is used to fire footballs at the continental United States