Denali

Denali, the highest mountain in North America, rises to 20,310 feet (6,190 m) in the Alaska Range. Its height alone is not what makes it overwhelming: it rises from a sloping plain whose lowest parts are only about 1,000 feet above sea level, so its rise from base to summit, some 17,000 to 18,000 feet (about 5,500 m), is among the greatest of any mountain entirely above sea level. It is the third most prominent and third most isolated peak on Earth, after Everest and Aconcagua. The mountain is a mass of granite, largely pink quartz monzonite, pushed up along the Denali Fault by the subduction of the Pacific plate beneath Alaska.

The Koyukon people have called it Denali for centuries. In 1896 a gold prospector named it after the presidential candidate William McKinley, and the federal government used that name from 1917. Alaska officially adopted Denali in 1975, the federal government followed in August 2015, and in January 2025 the Department of the Interior reverted the federal name to Mount McKinley. In Alaska, businesses named after Denali outnumber those named after McKinley by six to one, and the national park around it keeps the name.

The first attempt on the summit was recorded in 1903, and Frederick Cook's claim of a first ascent in 1906 is not accepted. The first verified ascent was made on 7 June 1913 by Hudson Stuck, Harry Karstens, Walter Harper and Robert Tatum, who approached from the north by the Muldrow Glacier. Today most climbers use the West Buttress route pioneered by Bradford Washburn in 1951, starting from a base camp at about 7,200 feet on the Kahiltna Glacier. Everyone attempting the summit must obtain a permit and attend an orientation at the Walter Harper Talkeetna Ranger Station, and by 2003 the mountain had claimed nearly a hundred lives.

Most visitors experience Denali from Denali National Park and Preserve, some six million acres where the treeline sits at about 2,500 feet and most of the land is open tundra. The single park road runs about 92 miles (148 km) west from the George Parks Highway; only the first 15 miles, to the Savage River, are paved and open to private cars, and beyond that access is by park bus. The mountain makes its own weather and is hidden by cloud much of the time: by a common estimate only about 30 per cent of visitors see it at all. The other way to see it is from the air, on flightseeing trips from Talkeetna, the small town that serves as the base for Denali expeditions.

Getting there

The nearest major city is Anchorage, about 214 km from the summit, with Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC) about 217 km away. Talkeetna, the climbing and flightseeing base, is about a two-hour drive north of Anchorage; the park entrance lies about 100 miles further north on the George Parks Highway.