Have I mentioned clicking on photo will enlarge so you can actually make out images, but yall probably knew that!
Forward we go heading north to Denali: The fact that it was labor day increased the traveling of loads of people celebrating the beautiful weather and last weekend of summer. Lots of family groups out and about, a great amount of four wheelers with camping rigs.
The road became more scenic as we ventured north.
Taking a side trip to Talkeetna, supposedly the funky-ness of Northern Exposure so much reminding us of Woodstock, NY. Cute little town and to T’s delight another art show! At the town museum we were in time to be part of a ranger walking us thru the factoids regarding the climb to the top and were part of a group experiment as to the pros and cons of attempting such.
Our team made it and very interesting learning experience, removed climbing from bucket list!!!
A hike into town for after dinner desert and along the river was the highlight of his day.
Watched an eagle fishing but: Still No Bear!
Greeting to all, you gotta see this state, LnT
Here comes the trivia:
Talkeetna is in Matanuska-Susitna Borough, Alaska, United States. It is part of the Anchorage, Alaska Metropolitan Statistical Area. At the 2000 census the population was 772. The town of Cicely from the television series Northern Exposure is widely thought to be patterned after Talkeetna.
It is situated on the confluence of three wild, glacially fed rivers: the Sustina Chulitna and Talkeetna. An important location for trading and fishing by the Dena’ina, a subset of the Athabaskan people which is where it gets it name meaning ‘river of plenty. In 1869 a gold rush in the Susitna brought prospectors and was the sight for a riverboat steamer station which brought supplies to prospectors heading northwest to mining claims, and later headquarters for the Seward to Fairbanks railroad route.
Talkeetna is close to world-class salmon fishing and Denali (also known as Mt. McKinley). Tourists travel to Talkeetna each summer to fish, raft and go flightseeing. Products from local artists, musicians and craftspeople are available in area stores. A 37-year history of The Moose Dropping Festival, a two-day celebration was named after a lottery where participants bet on numbered, varnished pieces of "moose droppings" dropped from a helicopter onto a target. A softball tournament historically other events that typically have been held include a five-kilometre walk-run—also not a part of the official festival, a Mountain Mother contest, and a parade. In December, the Wilderness Woman and Bachelor Auction & Ball takes place.
Talkeetna is served by Talkeetna Airport, which is home to several air taxi companies that provide flight seeing trips and support for mountain climbers. Many of the air taxi companies were started to ferry climbers from Talkeetna to Denali, as Talkeetna has the easiest access to the south side of the mountain where the main base camp is located. Legendary bush pilots based out of Talkeetna, pioneered glacier flying on Mt. McKinley. Their companies are still in operation.
Talkeetna is home to independent webcast and wiki Whole Wheat Radio. Talkeetna has a community radio station, 88.9 KTNA, with locally hosted shows and NPR programming. There are two local newspapers. The largest, the Talkeetna Good Times, has a distribution of 8,500 year-round and serves the communities of Talkeetna, Trapper Creek, Willow, Houston, Big Lake, with additional distribution along the Parks Highway as far north as Nenana. The Good Times is currently published every other week in print and updated frequently online.[9] Publishers of the Good Times also publish a local area phone book and an annual visitors guide. The Alaska Pioneer Press is a monthly newspaper based in Talkeetna, with an online news component and news briefs updated regularly.
Mount McKinley or Denali (Athabaskan for "The High One") in Alaska, USA is the highest mountain peak in North America and the United States, with a summit elevation of 20,320 feet (6,194 m) above sea level. The CIA World Factbook lists its summit elevation as 6,198 metres (20,335 ft). It is the centerpiece of Denali National Park and Preserve.
Geology and features
Mount McKinley is a granitic pluton. It has been uplifted by tectonic pressure while at the same time, erosion has stripped away the (somewhat softer) sedimentary rock above and around the mountain.
The forces that lifted Mount McKinley—the subduction of the Pacific plate beneath the North American plate—also raised great ranges across southern Alaska. As that huge sheet of ocean-floor rock plunges downward into the mantle, it shoves and crumples the continent into soaring mountains which include some of the most active volcanoes on the continent. Mount McKinley in particular is uplifted relative to the rocks around it because it is at the intersection of major active strike-slip faults (faults that move rocks laterally across the Earth's surface) which allow the deep buried rocks to be unroofed more rapidly compared to those around them.
Mount McKinley has two significant summits: the South Summit is the highest one, while the North Summit has an elevation of 19,470 feet (5,934 m) and a prominence of approximately 1,320 feet (402 m). The North Summit is sometimes counted as a separate peak (see e.g., the List of United States fourteeners) and sometimes not; it is rarely climbed, except by those doing routes on the north side of the massif.
Five large glaciers flow off the slopes of the mountain. The Peters Glacier lies on the northwest side of the massif, while the Muldrow Glacier falls from its northeast slopes. Just to the east of the Muldrow, and abutting the eastern side of the massif, is the Traleika Glacier. The Ruth Glacier lies to the southeast of the mountain, and the Kahiltna Glacier leads up to the southwest side of the mountain.
Notable features
Mount McKinley has a larger bulk and rise than Mount Everest, although the summit of Everest is higher at 29,029 feet (8,848 m). Everest's base sits on the Tibetan Plateau[4] at about 17,000 feet (5,200 m), giving it a real vertical rise of little more than 12,000 feet (3,700 m). The base of Mount McKinley is roughly at 2,000-foot (610 m) elevation, giving it an actual rise of 18,000 feet (5,500 m).
The mountain is also characterized by extremely cold weather. Temperatures as low as −75.5 °F (−59.7 °C) and windchills as low as −118.1 °F (−83.4 °C) have been recorded by an automated weather station located at 18,700 feet (5,700 m). According to the National Park Service, in 1932 the Liek-Lindley expedition recovered a self-recording minimum thermometer left near Browne's Tower, at about 15,000 feet (4,600 m), on Mount McKinley by the Stuck-Karstens party in 1913. The spirit thermometer was calibrated down to 95 °F degrees below zero and the lowest recorded temperature was below that point, they the thermometer back to Washington, D.C. where it was tested by the United States Weather Bureau and found to be accurate. The lowest temperature that it had recorded was found to be approximately −100 °F (−73 °C) degrees.
Mount McKinley from Denali National Park
Naming
The Koyukon are a group of Athabaskan people living in northern Alaska. Their traditional home is along the Koyukuk and Yukon rivers where they subsisted by hunting and trapping for thousands of years. Many Koyukon live in a similar manner today.
The *Koyukon language belongs to a widespread family called Na-Dene or Athabaskan spoken by native people scattered throughout northwestern North America and in pockets as far south as California and Arizona.
Main article: Denali naming dispute
The name of the mountain is subject to dispute. The Koyukon Athabaskan people who inhabitants the area around the mountain referred to the peak as Dinale or Denali ("the high one"). In the late 1890s, a gold prospector named it "McKinley" as political support for then presidential candidate William McKinley of Ohio. The Alaska Board of Geographic Names changed the name of the mountain to Denali, which is how it is referred to locally. However, a 1975 request by the Alaska state legislature to the United States Board on Geographic Names to do the same was blocked by Ohio congressman Ralph Regula, whose district includes McKinley's hometown. Members of the Ohio congressional delegation continue to protect the McKinley name, blocking attempts by the Alaska congressional delegation to get the Board of Geographic Names to change it to Denali. Thus, "Denali" is correct according to the Alaska state Board, while "McKinley" is correct according to the national Board.
History
Hudson Stuck led the first successful summit of the mountain in 1913.
The Koyukon Athabaskans are the first Native Americans mentions with access to the flanks of the mountain (living in the Yukon, Tanana and Kuskokwim basins).[2] The historical first European sighting of Mount McKinley took place on May 6, 1794, when George Vancouver was surveying the Knik Arm of the Cook Inlet and mentioned “distant stupendous mountains” in his journal. The Russian explorer Lavrenty Zagoskin explored the Tanana and Kuskokwim rivers in 1843 and 1844 and was probably the first European to sight the mountain from the other side.[5]
William Dickey, a New Hampshire-born Seattleite who had been digging for gold in the sands of the Susitna River, wrote, after his return to the lower states, an account in the New York Sun that appeared on January 24, 1897.[6] His report drew attention with the sentence “We have no doubt that this peak is the highest in North America, and estimate that it is over 20,000 feet (6,100 m) high.” Until then 18,000-foot (5,500 m) Mount Saint Elias was believed to be the continent’s highest point (Mount Logan was still unknown and Mount St Elias’ height had been overestimated to beat Pico de Orizaba[citation needed]). Though later praised for his estimate, Dickey admitted that other prospector parties had also guessed the mountain to be over 20,000 feet (6,100 m).[7]
Climbing history
The first recorded attempt to climb Mount McKinley was by Judge James Wickersham in 1903, via the Peters Glacier and the North Face, now known as the Wickersham Wall. This route has tremendous avalanche danger and was not successfully climbed until 1963.
Famed explorer Dr. Frederick Cook claimed the first ascent of the mountain in 1906. His claim was regarded with some suspicion from the start, but was also widely believed. It was later proved false, with some crucial evidence provided by Bradford Washburn when he was sketched on a lower peak.
In 1910, four locals (Tom Lloyd, Peter Anderson, Billy Taylor, and Charles McGonagall), known as the Sourdough expedition, attempted McKinley, despite a complete lack of climbing experience. They spent approximately three months on the mountain. However, their purported summit day was impressive: carrying a bag of doughnuts, each a thermos of hot chocolate, and a 14-foot (4.2 m) spruce pole, two of them reached the North Summit, the lower of the two, and erected the pole near the top. According to them, they took a total of 18 hours — a record that has yet to be breached (as of 2006). No one believed their success (partly due to false claims that they had climbed both summits) until the true first ascent, in 1913.
High camp (17,200 ft/5,200 m) of the West Buttress Route pioneered by Bradford Washburn, photographed in 2001
Mount McKinley West Buttress (lower left to upper right), August 2010
In 1912, the Parker-Browne expedition nearly reached the summit, turning back within just a few hundred yards of it due to harsh weather. In fact, that probably saved their lives, as a powerful earthquake shattered the glacier they ascended hours after they safely left it.
The first ascent of the main summit of McKinley came on June 7, 1913, by a party led by Hudson Stuck. The first man to reach the summit was Walter Harper, an Alaska Native. Harry Karstens and Robert Tatum also made the summit. Tatum later commented, "The view from the top of Mount McKinley is like looking out the windows of Heaven!"[8] They ascended the Muldrow Glacier route pioneered by the earlier expeditions, which is still often climbed today. Stuck confirmed, via binoculars, the presence of a large pole near the North Summit; this report confirmed the Sourdough ascent, and today it is widely believed that the Sourdoughs did succeed on the North Summit. However, the pole was never seen before or since, so there is still some doubt. Stuck also discovered that the Parker-Browne party were only about 200 feet (61 m) of elevation short of the true summit when they turned back.
See the timeline below for more important events in Mount McKinley's climbing history.
The mountain is regularly climbed today, with just over 50% of the expeditions successful, although it is still a dangerous undertaking. By 2003, the mountain had claimed the lives of nearly 100 mountaineers.[9] The vast majority of climbers use the West Buttress Route, pioneered in 1951 by Bradford Washburn, after an extensive aerial photographic analysis of the mountain. Climbers typically take two to four weeks to ascend the mountain.
Geography
Talkeetna is located at 62°18′41″N 150°5′13″W / 62.31139°N 150.08694°W (62.311397, -150.087053)[1] at the confluence of three rivers, the Susitna, Chulitna and Talkeetna. The Talkeetna townsite was established in 1919 when the railroad surveyed and auctioned 80 lots. The average price at the sale was $14.25.[2] Flightseeing, rafting, mountain biking, hiking, camping, fishing and hunting make up a large portion of the local economy. Talkeetna is a 2.5 hour drive from Anchorage, the largest city in Alaska. The core downtown area is classified as a National Historic Site, with buildings dating from the early 1900s including Nagley's General Store[3], Fairview Inn and the Talkeetna Roadhouse[4].
According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of 42.9 square miles (111.2 km²), of which, 41.6 square miles (107.7 km²) of it is land and 1.4 square miles (3.5 km²) of it (3.19%) is water.
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