Denali - The Mountain

June 16, 2010

So today let’s talk about the mountain. I would like to open with an Athabaskan story about the origins of the mountain. This is a paraphrased from Jette 1908: 312-13 in Make Prayers to the Raven.

The Raven, incarnated as a young man, had paddled his canoe across a great body of water to ask a woman to marry him. She refused to be his wife, s he made her sink into the mud and disappear; and then he began paddling back home. The woman’s mother kept two brown bears, and in her anger she told them to drown the young man. They dug furiously at the lake’s edge making huge waves everywhere on the water. But Raven clamed a narrow path before him and paddled on. Eventually he became exhausted, so he threw a harpoon that struck the crest of a wave. At that moment he fainted from the intensity of his concentration, and when he awoke a foreted land had replaced the water. He saw that the first wave his harpoon had struck had become a small mountain. Then it had glanced off, eventually striking a huge wave that solidified into another mountain – the one now called Deenaalee, or Mt. McKinley.

It is said that only 1 in 3 tourists who come to see the mountain in the summer are usually not afforded an opportunity to espy this magnificent peak. We were most fortunate as we saw the entire Alaksan range, including Mt. McKinley, on the plane ride from Anchorage to Fairbanks. We saw it again from the north face while on the wilderness tour and a third time from Mt. McKinley Lodge in Trappers Creek. We continue to be truly blessed on our great adventure.

First a little bit about the mountain. Some of the following description is taken from an Alaska Geographic publication entitled Denali: A Living Tapestry.

A half-billion years ago, the land around Denali was an ocean floor. Today it is hundreds of miles from the coast. Mixed in are geological fragments of diverse types, dating from different eras. It is a patchwork formed through the colossal movements of the Pacific and North American plates that shape it still Plate tectonics are only part of what makes Denali geology so interesting Heat and ice, in the forms of volcanoes and glaciers, have added even more patterns, colors, and shapes to the geological patchwork.

The bright colors of Polychrome Pass were created by magma, which welled up and spilled over older sedimentary rock layers. Those ancient sedimentary rocks, 100 million years old, can be seen in Igloo Canyon and along Polychrome Pass. The thick blanket of volcanic debris spewed 50 to 60 million years ago appears as colorful bands of brown, yellow, tan, white, orange and purple at the Pass. They include basalt, andesite and rhyolite.

Glaciers have scraped and spilled through most of the park in successive Ice-Age pulses, carving out U-shaped valleys before retreating to their high, cold birthing places. After the most recent episode, which ended less than 10,000 years ago, the largest glaciers shrank back to their icy cradles in the Alaska Range. There they creak, growl, and drip, feeding silty rivers that course through the park’s many valleys.

The mountain rises up starting at a base altitude of 2000’ and tops out at 20,230’ making it the highest mountain in North American. It’s snowy mass is flanked by five giant glaciers and countless icefalls. Denali can be seen from as far away as Cook Inlet, 200 miles to the south, and as far north as Fairbanks, 150 miles to the north.

While it is the tallest mountain in North American, it is no where near the tallest in the world. There are over 450 mountains standing over 23,000’, all of which are in Asia. The tallest mountain outside of Asia is Aconcagua which stands at 22,841’ and is situated near the Argentinean/Chilean border in South America.

Mt. McKinley has a larger bulk rise that Mt. Everest, the world’s tallest mountain, even though the summit of Everest is almost 9,000’ higher as measured from sea level. The base of Everest sits on the Tibetan Plateau at nearly 17,000’. The base of Mt. McKinley sits nearly 2,000’ above sea level, giving it a vertical rise of almost 18,000’. In 2009 1,161 climbers registered to climb. 682 (59%) reached the summit. As of today 336 people have successfully scaled Mt. McKinley in 2010.

On our bus tour we wound along the river bed and the landscape changed dramatically after making the turn at Savage River. The mountain vistas with low hanging clouds were magnificent. It wa about there that we could look to the Southwest and see Denali encapsulated within a dome cloud (I forget the technical name). We would barely make out the facets of the north face. At this point in time it seemed unlikely that we would be able to see the mountain clearly. The landscape was always changing. Igloo and Cathedral Mountains were breathtaking. As well, Polychrome Mountain and Glacier were magnificent. We even saw a rainbow that originated in the clouds and made land fall along the river bed. Our pot of gold was the view. Both Doug and I had never seen anything like this and probably never will.

Our tour was to have turned around at Highway Pass but our driver decided to continue on an additional 9 miles because he felt that the clouds had cleared and we had a shot at seeing the mountain. We proceeded down to Thoroughfare Pass and behold there was the north face of Denali. We were 32 miles as the crow flies from the peak. We could clearly see both the north and south peaks (19,470 and 20320 respectively). I am not sure I have ever been so moved by a vision of nature. Describing it is beyond my limited vocabulary. Every cell in my body was moved by what I saw. I may have been crying at the sight but it was so cold and the winds so fierce that my tears would have frozen and evaporated before reaching my cheeks. Even now my spine tingles upon recollection of the mountain. God’s handiwork was truly evident.

Since my words can not weave the rich picture you will be able to find some of our photos in a subsequent blog posting entitle Denali Photos.