Mount Blackburn

A 4,996-metre peak in the Wrangell range of east-central Alaska — a separate range from the more famous Alaska Range and the Saint Elias range, sitting between them in the southern portion of the state. Blackburn is the highest peak in the Wrangells and the fifth-highest mountain in the United States. The mountain is named for Joseph Clay Stiles Blackburn, a 19th-century American senator from Kentucky. The peak forms a massive dome rather than a sharp summit; the upper mountain holds extensive glaciation, including some of the longest valley glaciers in North America.

The first ascent came in 1912 by a team led by the American climber Dora Keen — one of the early documented mountain ascents by a woman in North America. Keen and her partner George Handy reached the summit on May 19, 1912, after an arduous approach from McCarthy through heavily glaciated terrain. The route they pioneered up the north side of the mountain has been varied substantially in the century since; modern ascents typically approach from the southeast via the Kennicott Glacier system. The first ascent of Blackburn was, for its era, an unusually bold project. Keen's account remains one of the foundational documents of early American mountaineering.

The Wrangells receive less climbing attention than the Saint Elias or Alaska Range, partly because the peaks are slightly lower and partly because the access is less developed. The road to McCarthy is one of the most remote driveable terminals in North America, and the climbing infrastructure beyond is minimal. Blackburn is climbed by perhaps a few teams per year. The technical difficulty is moderate — sustained glacier travel and a steep summit ridge that requires attention but no extended technical climbing. The fatality rate is low.

What Blackburn offers, beyond a peak among the highest in the United States, is the Wrangell range itself. The Wrangells are a younger volcanic range, geologically distinct from the older glaciated mountains to the east and west. The summit views from Blackburn extend across a landscape of volcanic peaks, ice fields, and the Copper River basin — a particular Alaskan geography that has not been heavily photographed and remains, in climbing terms, less well known than it deserves.