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
Our little record cache at the Parker Pass, placed at the foot of the
west or upward-facing side of the great slab which marks the natural
camping site, should stand there for many years. It is not a place where
snow lies deep or long, and it will surely be found by any who seek it.
We took our last looks up into the Grand Basin, still brilliant in the
sunshine, our last looks at the summit, still cloudless and clear. There
was a melancholy even in the midst of triumph in looking for the last
time at these scenes where we had so greatly hoped and endeavored--and
had been so amply rewarded. We recalled the eager expectation with which
we first gazed up between these granite slabs into the long-hidden
basin, a week before, and there was sadness in the feeling that in all
probability we should never have this noble view again.
[Sidenote: Harper Glacier]
Before the reader turns his back upon the Grand Basin once for all, I
should like to put a name upon the glacier it contains--since it is the
fashion to name glaciers. I should like to call it the Harper Glacier,
after my half-breed companion of three years, who was the first human
being to reach the summit of the mountain. This reason might suffice,
but there is another and most interesting reason for associating the
name Harper with this mountain. Arthur Harper, Walter's father, the
pioneer of all Alaskan miners, "the first man who thought of trying the
Yukon as a mining field so far as we know," as William Ogilvie tells us
in his "Early Days on the Yukon"[5] (and none had better opportunity of
knowing than Ogilvie), was also the first man to make written reference
to this mountain, since Vancouver, the great navigator, saw it from the
head of Cook's Inlet in 1794.
Arthur Harper, in company with Al. Mayo, made the earliest exploration
of the Tanana River, ascending that stream in the summer of 1878 to
about the present site of Fairbanks; and in a letter to E. W. Nelson, of
the United States Biological Survey, then on the Alaskan coast, Harper
wrote the following winter of the "great ice mountain to the south" as
one of the most wonderful sights of the trip.[6] It is pleasant to think
that a son of his, yet unborn, was to be the first to set foot on its
top; pleasantly also the office of setting his name upon the lofty
glacier, the gleam from which caught his eye and roused his wonder
thirty years ago, falls upon one who has been glad and proud to take, in
some measure, his place.
[Sidenote: Descent]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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