Mt. McKinley    

The Mountain 
Mount McKinley has been called the Alaskan landscape's most impressive feature. While you may not see this great peak during your stay here, it is there! Mount McKinley is the highest mountain on the North American continent. Measured from the 2,000-foot lowlands near Wonder Lake to its summit, this mountain is considered by many to be the highest in the world. The vertical relief of 18,000 feet, greater even than that of Mount Everest, tops out on the snowy summit at 20,320 feet. McKinley's north summit is North America's second highest peak at 19,470 feet. Temperatures at the summit are severe even in summer. Winter lows at just 14,500 feet can plummet below -95 degrees F! During storms, winds can gust to more than 1 50 mph. Permanent snowfields cover more than 50 percent of the mountain and feed the many glaciers that surround its base. The mountain's granite and slate core is, in fact, overlain by Ice that is hundreds of feet thick in places.

Mount McKinley reigns in lofty isolation over the Alaska Range, that magnificent 600-mile arc of mountains that divides south-central Alaska from the interior plateau. Its life as a mountain range began some 65 million years ago, the result of the Denali Fault, North America's largest crustal break. This fault, where two tectonic plates have moved against each other, stretches for 1,300 miles from the Yukon border down to the Aleutian peninsula. There the Alaska and Aleutian Ranges meet in a mad jumble of peaks that includes active volcanoes. Earthquake tremors both mild and moderate are frequent occurrences in the park and preserve. The building of these massive mountains began out of a flat lowland. The material that Earth's inner turmoil thrust up has subsequently been eroded, sculpted, and weighed down by huge masses of ice. Numerous glaciers still radiate from the high peaks of the Alaska Range, where the frigid temperatures prevent their melting. Some of the glaciers are visible from the park road. The debris-laden snout of the 35- mile-long Muldrow Glacier lies within a half mile of the park road. The park and preserve owes its beautiful landscape contrasts-wide, low plains and dark, somber mountains; brightly colored peaks and sheer granite domes-to the Denali Fault. Geologists say that Mount McKinley still rises.

W.A. Dickey named the mountain after President William McKinley in 1897. Prior to that time the Athabaskan Indians of Interior Alaska called it Denali, meaning "The High One." In other regions of the state it had different names: Doleyka, Traleika, Bulshia, Gora and Tenada. It was called "Dunsmore's Mountain" by the English speakers. Efforts over the years to officially rename the mountain Denali, the Athabaskan name, have been unsuccessful. 

The Sourdough Party made the first successful climb of Mount McKinley in 1910. Prior to the Sourdough climb, people believed that the North Peak was the higher peak. Via the Muldrow Glacier, the Sourdough Party hauled a forty-foot spruce pole and flag to the top of the North Peak. They discovered at the summit, however, that the South Peak is in fact higher by 850 feet. Their flag was not visible from Fairbanks, thereby leaving the climbers with only their word as proof of their feat.

On June 7, 1913, the Karstens-Stuck expedition conquered the true peak of Mount McKinley. With Harry Karstens and Rev. Hudson Stuck were Robert Tatum and Walter Harper. From their vantage point atop the South Peak they could look across to the North Peak and see the flag pole left by the Sourdough Party. Harry Karstens went on to become the first superintendent of Mount McKinley National Park in 1917.

Climbing Mount McKinley 
The National Park Service implemented a program designed to both enhance the educational outreach for Denali mountaineers and to defray the costs associated with managing mountaineering activities on Mount McKinley and Mount Foraker. This program includes a 60 day preregistration requirement and a Mountaineering Special Use Fee. Climbers are charged $150 per person to climb Mount McKinley or Mount Foraker.