Joan and Keith's Travels: Denali

Denali National Park & Preserve

Denali National Park and Preserve is a national park and preserve located in Interior Alaska, centered on Denali (Mount McKinley), the highest mountain in North America. The park encompasses more than 6 million acres (24,500 km²), of which 4,724,735.16 acres (19,120 km²) are federally owned. The national preserve is 1,334,200 acres (5,430 km²), of which 1,304,132 acres (5,278 km²) are federally owned. On December 2, 1980, a 2,146,580 acre (8,687 km²) Denali Wilderness was established within the park. Denali's landscape is a mix of forest at the lowest elevations, including deciduous taiga. The preserve is also home to tundra at middle elevations, and glaciers, rock, and snow at the highest elevations. The longest glacier is the Kahiltna Glacier. Today, 400,000 people visit the park annually. They view wildlife, climb mountains, and backpack. Wintertime activities includes dog-sledding, cross-country skiing, and snowmachining.

Establishment of the park

In 1906, conservationist Charles Alexander Sheldon conceived the idea of preserving the Mount McKinley region as a National Park. He presented the plan to his co-members of the Boone and Crockett Club. They decided that the political climate at the time was not favorable for congressional action, and that the best hope of success rested on the approval and support from the Alaskans themselves. Sheldon wrote "The first step was to secure the approval and cooperation of the delegate who represented Alaska in Congress." In October of 1915, Sheldon took up the matter with Dr. E. W. Nelson of the Biological Survey at Washington D.C., and with George Bird Grinnell, with a purpose to introduce a suitable bill in the coming session of Congress. The matter was then taken to the Game Committee of the Boone and Crockett Club, and after a full discussion received the Committee's full endorsement. On December 3, 1915 the plan was presented to Alaska's delegate, James Wickersham, who after some deliberation gave his approval. The plan then went to the Executive Committee of the Boone and Crockett Club and was unanimously accepted on December 15, 1915. The plan was thereupon endorsed by the Club and presented to Stephen Mather, assistant secretary of the Interior in Washington, D.C., who immediately approved it.

The bill was introduce in April, 1916, by delegate Wickersham in the house, and by Senator Key Pitman of Nevada in the Senate. Much lobbying took place over the following year, and on February 19, 1917 the bill passed. On February 26, 1917, eleven years from the conception, President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson signed the bill into legislation.

Only a portion of Mount McKinley (not even including the summit) was within the original park boundary. The park was designated an international biosphere reserve in 1976. A separate Denali National Monument was proclaimed by President Jimmy Carter on December 1, 1978.

Naming controversy

The name of Mount McKinley National Park was subject to local criticism from the beginning of the park. The word "Denali" means "the high one" in the native Athabaskan language and refers to the mountain itself. The mountain was named after newly elected US president William McKinley in 1897 by local prospector William A. Dickey. The United States government formally adopted the name Mount McKinley after President Wilson signed the bill creating Mount McKinley National Park into effect in 1917 In 1980, Mount McKinley National Park was combined with Denali National Monument, and the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act named the combined unit the Denali National Park and Preserve. At that time the Alaska state Board of Geographic Names changed the name of the mountain to "Denali." However, the U.S. Board of Geographic Names does not recognize the change. Alaskans tend to use "Denali" and rely on context to distinguish between the park and the mountain.

Recent

In 1992, Chris McCandless ventured into the Alaskan wilderness and settled near Lake Wentitika in the park. He carried little food and equipment and hoped to live simply for a time in solitude. Almost four months later, McCandless's starved remains were found, weighing only 67 pounds (30 kg).

In September 2013, the Denali National Park Improvement Act was signed into law by President Barack Obama. The statute allows the United States Department of the Interior to "issue permits for microhydroelectric projects in the Kantishna Hills area of the Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska"; it authorizes the Department of the Interior and a company called Doyon Tourism, Inc. to exchange some land in the area; it authorizes the National Park Service (NPS) to "issue permits to construct a natural gas pipeline in the Denali National Park"; and it renames the existing Talkeetna Ranger Station the Walter Harper Talkeetna Ranger Station.

Geography

Denali National Park and Preserve includes the central, highest portion of the Alaska Range, together with many of the glaciers and glacial valleys running southwards out of the range. To the north the park and preserve encompass the valleys of the McKinley, Toklat and Foraker Rivers, as well as the Kantishna and Wyoming Hills. The George Parks Highway runs along the eastern edge of the park, crossing the Alaska Range at the divide between the valleys of the Chulitna River and the Nenana River. The entrance to the park is about 11 miles (18 km) south of Healy. The Denali Visitor Center and the park headquarters are located just inside the entrance. The park road parallels the Alaska Range for 92 miles (148 km), ending at Kantishna. Preserve lands are located on the west side of the park, with one parcel encompassing areas of lakes in the Highpower Creek and Muddy River areas, and the second preserve area covering the southwest end of the high Alaska Range around Mount Dall. In contrast to the park, where hunting is prohibited or restricted to subsistence hunting by local residents, sport hunting is allowed in the preserve lands.

Vehicle access

The park is serviced by a 91-mile (146 km) road from the George Parks Highway to the mining camp of Kantishna. It runs east to west, north of and roughly parallel to the imposing Alaska Range. Only a small fraction of the road is paved because permafrost and the freeze-thaw cycle would create a high cost for maintaining a paved road. The first 15 miles (24 km) of the road are available to private vehicles. Beyond this point, visitors must access the interior of the park through concessionary buses. Wonder Lake can be reached by a six-hour bus ride from the Wilderness Access Center. Eielson Visitor Center is located four hours into the park on the road.

Several fully narrated tours of the park are available, the most popular of which is the Tundra Wilderness Tour. The tours travel from the initial boreal forests through tundra to the Toklat River or Kantishna. A clear view of the mountain is possible about 20% of the time during the summer due to clouds. It is visible more often during the winter. Several portions of the road run alongside sheer cliffs that drop hundreds of feet at the edges. There are no guardrails. As a result of the danger involved, and because most of the gravel road is only one lane wide, drivers must be trained in procedures for navigating the sharp mountain curves, and yielding the right-of-way to opposing buses and park vehicles.

While the main park road goes straight through the middle of the Denali National Park Wilderness, the national preserve and portions of the park not designated wilderness are even more inaccessible. There are no roads extending out to the preserve areas, which are on the far west end of the park. The far north of the park, characterized by hills and rivers, is accessed by the Stampede Trail, a dirt road which effectively stops at the park boundary near the "Into the Wild" bus. The rugged south portion of the park, characterized by large glacier-filled canyons, is accessed by Petersville Road, a dirt road that stops about 5 miles (8.0 km) outside the park. The mountains can be accessed most easily by air taxis that land on the glaciers. Kantishna can be reached by air taxi and access to the west side of the park via the Purkeypile Airstrip, which is just outside the park boundary.

Wilderness

The Denali Wilderness is a wilderness area in the Denali National Park and Preserve. It encompasses the high heart of the Alaska Range, including Denali. The Wilderness comprises about one-third of the national park.
Denali Wilderness covers the area formerly known as Mount McKinley National Park from 1917 until the park was expanded and renamed in 1980. It is 2,146,580 acres (8,687 km²) in area; the entire park is larger than the state of Massachusetts.

Geology

Denali National Park and Preserve is located in the central area of the Alaska Range, a mountain chain extending 600 miles (970 km) across Alaska. Its best-known geologic feature is Mount McKinley, also known by its Athabascan name of Denali. Its elevation of 20,237 feet (6,168 m) makes it the highest mountain in North America. Its vertical relief (distance from base to peak) of 18,000 feet (5,500 m) is the highest of any mountain in the world. The mountain is still gaining about 1 millimetre (0.039 in) in height each year due to the continued convergence of the North American and Pacific Plates. The mountain is primarily made of granite, a hard rock that does not erode easily; this is why it has retained such a great height rather than being eroded.

There are three major rock provinces that run in east-west bands through the park. The oldest is in the north, and the younger ones in the south. The area is characterized by collision tectonics: over the past millions of years, exotic terranes in the Pacific Ocean have been moving toward the North American landmass and accreting, or attaching, to the area that now makes up Alaska.

The oldest rocks in the park are part of the Yukon-Tanana terrane. They originated from ocean sediments deposited between 400 million and 1 billion years ago. The original rocks have been affected by the processes of regional metamorphism, folding, and faulting to form rocks such as schist, quartzite, phyllite, slate, marble, and limestone.

The next oldest group of rocks is the Farewell terrane. It is composed of rocks from the Paleozoic era (250-500 million years old). The sediments that make up these rocks were deposited in a variety of marine environments, ranging from deep ocean basins to continental shelf areas. The abundant marine fossils are evidence that around 380 million years ago, this area had a warm, tropical climate.

The Pingston, McKinley, and Chulitna terranes are the next oldest; they were deposited in the Mesozoic era. The rock types include marble, chert, limestone, shale, and sandstone. There are intrusions of igneous rocks, such as gabbro, diabase, and diorite. Special features include pillow basalts, which are formed when molten lava flows into water and a hard outer crust forms, making a puffy, pillow shaped feature; as well as an ophiolite sequence, which is a distinct sequence of rocks indicating that a section of oceanic crust has been uplifted and thrust onto a continental area.

Some of the youngest rocks in the park include the Kahlitna terrane, which is a flysch sequence (a sedimentary rock sequence deposited in a marine environment during the early stages of mountain building) formed about 100 million years ago, during late Cretaceous time. Another rock sequence is the McKinley Intrusive Sequence, which includes Mount McKinley. The Cantwell Volcanics include basalt and rhyolite flows, as well as ash deposits. An example can be seen at Polychrome Pass in the park.

Denali National Park and Preserve is located in an area of intense tectonic activity: the Pacific Plate is subducting under the North American plate, creating the Denali fault system, which is a right-lateral strike-slip fault over 720 miles (1,160 km) long. This is a part of the larger fault system which includes the famous San Andreas Fault of California. Over 600 earthquakes occur in the park each year, helping seismologists to understand this fault system. Most of these earthquakes are too small to be felt, although two large earthquakes did occur in 2002. On October 23, 2002 a magnitude 6.7 earthquake occurred in the park, and on November 3, 2002, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake occurred. These earthquakes did not cause a significant loss of life or property, since the area is very sparsely populated, but they did trigger thousands of landslides.