The first ascent of Denali

Hudson Stuck · 1913 CE · Earth

The first ascent of Denali — Hudson Stuck · 1913 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Reach the true summit of Denali by the Muldrow glacier and the north-east ridge, and settle the claims of Cook and the Sourdoughs.

Historical context

Denali had been claimed twice before 1913: Frederick Cook's 1906 photograph was a fake, and the Sourdough miners of 1910 had climbed the lower North Peak and planted a spruce pole there, which nobody in Alaska quite believed. Hudson Stuck, the Episcopal Archdeacon of the Yukon, who travelled thousands of miles a winter by dog team, put together a party of four with the Fairbanks freighter Harry Karstens, the twenty-one-year-old Alaska Native Walter Harper and the divinity student Robert Tatum, and left Nenana by sled on 17 March 1913. They reached the true summit on 7 June.

The voyage, step by step

  1. St Patrick's Day at Nenana

    17 March 1913

    On 17 March 1913 six persons, two sleds and fourteen dogs set out from the mission at Nenana across country to the Kantishna: Hudson Stuck, Harry Karstens, Walter Harper, Robert Tatum, and the mission boys Johnny Fredson and Esaias. The first day covers about thirty miles.

  2. The Kantishna mining camps

    21 March 1913

    Up the Toklat and its Clearwater fork the party reaches Eureka, in the heart of the Kantishna gold country, on Friday 21 March, and lies over Easter at Glacier City, where Stuck conducts the first public worship ever held in the camp. Ten miles more bring them to Diamond City on the Bearpaw, fifty miles from the base of Denali.

  3. Base camp on Cache Creek

    April 1913

    Entering the range by Cache Creek, they make base camp at about four thousand feet near the tree line, kill caribou and mountain sheep for the winter's meat, and send Esaias back to Nenana with one dog team. Johnny Fredson, fifteen, stays to keep the camp and feed the dogs through the long vigil.

  4. Fire on the Muldrow

    April 1913

    They reach the Muldrow glacier on 11 April and relay loads up its broad, crevassed miles with the dogs, as far as 11,500 feet. A match carelessly thrown away after a pipe sets the supply tent alight and burns all the sugar, all the powdered milk, the baking powder, the prunes, raisins and dried apples, most of the tobacco, a case of pilot bread, a sack of woollen socks and gloves and a sack of films.

  5. A staircase three miles long

    May 1913

    The north-east ridge, which the parties of 1910 and 1912 had walked up, has been shattered by the earthquake of the previous summer into huge blocks of ice and rock. Karstens leads three weeks of work hewing a staircase three miles long in the shattered ice, with camps on the ridge where the day reaches fifty degrees and the night twenty-one below.

  6. The Grand Basin and the flagstaff

    6 June 1913

    On 2 June they move into the Grand Basin at 16,000 feet, on 3 June to 16,500, then 17,000, and on 6 June make their last camp at 18,000 feet, the highest yet pitched in North America. On the way Walter cries out that he can see the flagstaff on the North Peak, and through the field glasses they all see the Sourdoughs' pole standing against the sky.

  7. Walter Harper first on the top

    7 June 1913

    Roused at three on 7 June 1913, at four below zero in a keen north wind, they climb with Walter in the lead all day, feet like lumps of iron until noon; at 1:30 p.m. Walter Harper, a native Alaskan, is the first human being to set foot on the top of Denali. Stuck, last on the rope, is nearly hauled up the final feet and falls unconscious for a moment in the little snow basin of the summit.

  8. Down to the parishes

    7 June 1913

    They leave the summit at two minutes past three, unable to believe they have been an hour and a half on top, and reach the 18,000-foot camp about five, a weary but happy crew. Stuck writes in his diary that night that he remembers no day in his life so full of toil, distress and exhaustion, and yet so full of happiness.

Outcome

The summit at 1:30 p.m. on 7 June 1913, Walter Harper first; the Sourdoughs' spruce pole confirmed on the North Peak, a barometric height of 20,384 feet, and a Te Deum sung at the top.

Hudson Stuck

The Episcopal Archdeacon of the Yukon, who organised the first ascent of Denali in 1913, insisted that the mountain keep its native name, and saw to it that an Alaska Native, Walter Harper, set foot on the top first.

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Sources

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