Denali Photos

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Denali National Park is one of the crown jewels of Alaska.

Renowned for its wildlife and wilderness, the ultimate attraction is the mountain itself.

This is the classic view of Denali from Wonder Lake. It is the tallest mountain in North America at 20,320 feet. Known as Mt. McKinley on maps, it is still called Denali here in Alaska. Denali is the old Athabascan name for the mountain, meaning "The Great One".

It is such a huge mountain that it makes its own weather and is often

covered in clouds. On clear days it is visible from about 150 miles away

in Fairbanks. The best views of the mountain are from around Wonder Lake.

Wonder Lake is a large, deep lake in a high glacial valley. It is about as remote

a place as you can go without getting on a bush plane. It is 90 miles in

on the dead-end dirt road that runs through the park and ends a few miles

away at Kantishna. Moose, caribou, grizzly bears and wolves roam freely,

quite unconcerned about the intrusion of this one and only road.

Wonder Lake is about as close as most people get to Denali and

the combination of the lake and the mountain can take your breath away.

This was an incredibly lucky photo. Wonder Lake is often windy, and for Denali and the Alaska Range to be free of clouds while the lake is calm enough to reflect them might only happen a few hours all summer.

The first attempts to climb Denali in the early 1900's, including one group

of "sourdough" gold miners, approached the mountain from this side.

Simply getting to the mountain was an adventure in itself.

The first few reports of successful summits were hoaxes. The group of local

sourdoughs decided that they could prove they got to the summit by carrying

a large Spruce pole to use as a flag pole when they got to the summit, thinking

that the flag could be spotted by telescope from Fairbanks. Look at the

mountain again, and imagine not just climbing it, but carrying a 6-inch thick

tree trunk it took several men to lift.

No flag was ever seen from Fairbanks, and scandal clouded the issue once more.

A later climbing party found that spruce log on one of the lesser summits,

just shy of the highest peak.

You can't help but be touched by the raw power of Denali, and the forces that play around it. Here, the mountain has clouds moving in, but the peak still towers above them. In the foreground is the McKinley River which flows out of the McKinley Glacier. The wind has kicked up and formed a large dust-devil on the silty riverbed.

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