Denali

The highest mountain in North America, 6,190 metres in the Alaska Range, 250 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle. The name means "the high one" in Koyukon Athabascan — the Indigenous name, restored federally in 2015 after a century of being called Mount McKinley. The name fits. From sea level at the head of Cook Inlet to summit, Denali rises through more vertical relief than any other mountain on Earth.

The first confirmed summit came in 1913, by Hudson Stuck, Harry Karstens, Walter Harper, and Robert Tatum. Harper, an Athabascan, was the first to set foot on the summit. A previous claim from 1910 — the so-called Sourdough Expedition — placed two miners on the lower north peak with a fourteen-foot spruce pole, intended as proof. The pole was never seen again. Denali absorbed the evidence.

The standard route is the West Buttress, pioneered in 1951 by Bradford Washburn. The climb takes three weeks. Most ascents begin with a ski-plane landing at base camp on the Kahiltna Glacier at 2,200 metres. From there the route ascends through Camps 1 through 5, with the high camp at 5,200 metres on the Buttress itself. Summit day requires a full traverse of the upper mountain, often in temperatures below minus 30 even in the climbing season. The descent to high camp is when most accidents happen.

What separates Denali from peaks of similar elevation is latitude. At 63 degrees north, the mountain holds atmospheric conditions equivalent to a peak 1,000 metres higher in the Himalaya. The air pressure is lower. The cold is profound. Storms arrive without warning and last for days. The mountain has killed more than 120 climbers in a century of attempts. It remains, statistically, one of the most demanding climbs in the Atlas.