The saying of the Te Deum	[106]

Beginning the descent of the ridge; looking down 4,000 feet upon the Muldrow Glacier	[122]

Johnny Fred, who kept the base camp and fed the dogs and would not touch the sugar	[128]

“Muk,” the author’s pet malamute	[136]

Approaching the range	[164]

Map showing route of the Stuck-Karstens expedition to the summit of Mt. Denali (Mt. McKinley)	[End of volume]

THE ASCENT OF DENALI

CHAPTER I

PREPARATION AND APPROACH

The enterprise which this volume describes was a cherished purpose through a number of years. In the exercise of his duties as Archdeacon of the Yukon, the author has travelled throughout the interior of Alaska, both winter and summer, almost continuously since 1904. Again and again, now from one distant elevation and now from another, the splendid vision of the greatest mountain in North America has spread before his eyes, and left him each time with a keener longing to enter its mysterious fastnesses and scale its lofty peaks. Seven years ago, writing in The Spirit of Missions of a view of the mountain from the Pedro Dome, in the neighborhood of Fairbanks, he said: “I would rather climb that mountain than discover the richest gold-mine in Alaska.” Indeed, when first he went to Alaska it was part of the attraction which the country held for him that it contained an unclimbed mountain of the first class.

Scawfell and Skiddaw and Helvellyn had given him his first boyish interest in climbing; the Colorado and Canadian Rockies had claimed one holiday after another of maturer years, but the summit of Rainier had been the greatest height he had ever reached. When he went to Alaska he carried with him all the hypsometrical instruments that were used in the ascent as well as his personal climbing equipment. There was no definite likelihood that the opportunity would come to him of attempting the ascent, but he wished to be prepared with instruments of adequate scale in case the opportunity should come; and Hicks, of London, made them nine years ago.