The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley): A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest; Peak in North AmericaStuck, Hudson
History
The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley): A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest; Peak in North America
Stuck, Hudson
McKinley, Mount (Alaska); Mountaineering -- Alaska -- McKinley, Mount; Stuck, Hudson, 1863-1920 -- Travel -- Alaska -- McKinley, Mount
In the summer of the same year, 1910, Professor Parker and Mr. Belmore
Browne, members of the second Cook party, convinced by this time that
Cook's claim was wholly unfounded, attempted the mountain again, and
another party, organized by Mr. C. E. Rust, of Portland, Oregon, also
endeavored the ascent. But both these expeditions confined themselves to
the hopeless southern side of the range, from which, in all probability,
the mountain never can be climbed.
THE PARKER-BROWNE EXPEDITION
To a man living in the interior of Alaska, aware of the outfitting and
transportation facilities which the large commerce of Fairbanks affords,
aware of the navigable waterways that penetrate close to the foot-hills
of the Alaskan range, aware also of the amenities of the interior slope
with its dry, mild climate, its abundance of game and rich pasturage
compared with the trackless, lifeless snows of the coast slopes, there
seems a strange fatuity in the persistent efforts to approach the
mountain from the southern side of the range.
It is morally certain that if the only expedition that remains to be
dealt with--that organized by Professor Parker and Mr. Belmore Browne in
1912, which came within an ace of success--had approached the mountain
from the interior instead of from the coast, it would have forestalled
us and accomplished the first complete ascent.
The difficulties of the coast approach have been described graphically
enough by Robert Dunn in the summer and by Belmore Browne himself in the
winter. There are no trails; the snow lies deep and loose and falls
continually, or else the whole country is bog and swamp. There is no
game.
[Sidenote: Parker and Browne]
The Parker-Browne expedition left Seward, on Resurrection Bay, late in
January, 1912, and after nearly three months' travel, relaying their
stuff forward, they crossed the range under extreme difficulties, being
seventeen days above any vegetation, and reached the northern face of
the mountain on 25th March. The expedition either missed the pass near
the foot of the Muldrow Glacier, well known to the Kantishna miners, by
which it is possible to cross from willows to willows in eighteen miles,
or else avoided it in the vain hope of finding another. They then went
to the Kantishna diggings and procured supplies and topographical
information from the miners, and were thus able to follow the course of
the Lloyd party of 1910, reaching the Muldrow Glacier by the gap in the
glacier wall discovered by McGonogill and named McPhee Pass by him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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