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Denali
The high one, North America's tallest mountain in the Alaska Range
Measured base to summit, Denali rises more sharply from the land around it than any peak on Earth, its granite bulk soaring more than five and a half kilometres above the lowland taiga of interior Alaska. Its summit reaches 6,190 metres, the highest point in North America, and the Koyukon Athabascan name Denali - the High One - was restored in 2015 after a century under the name Mount McKinley. So far north and so massive, the mountain generates its own savage weather and ranks among the coldest mountains on the planet.
Denali stands at the heart of the Alaska Range, lifted along the Denali Fault where the Pacific plate's collision with North America has crumpled the crust. Its great vertical relief - far greater than Everest's rise above the Tibetan Plateau - stems from the low elevation of the surrounding terrain. Enormous glaciers radiate from its flanks, the Kahiltna chief among them, and the high latitude means thinner air at any given altitude, so the summit feels physiologically higher than its number suggests. Temperatures near the top can plunge below minus 50 degrees Celsius.
The first verified ascent of the main summit came in 1913, when Hudson Stuck's party, guided by the climbing of Walter Harper, reached the top. Today the West Buttress route draws climbers from around the world into Denali National Park and Preserve, a six-million-acre wilderness of grizzly bears, caribou, and Dall sheep. The mountain remains a serious undertaking, its cold and altitude unforgiving, and its restored Native name a marker of shifting attitudes toward the land and its first peoples.