Denali, The Great One

As we rounded the bend into Talkeetna on our train ride from Anchorage, we saw this, putting us in the rare 30% of travelers who come to see Denali and actually do. Why is it so unusual to see the mountain? Denali, at 20,320 feet above sea level, is a cloud magnet. Like a boulder in a stream, the air currents and moisture swirl and dance around the mountain creating its own personal weather system. The local Athabascan tribe did not call it The Great One for nothing.

Denali or Mount McKinley? It is Denali, once again. President Obama officially restored its original Athabascan name on a visit here in 2015. Seems only right. About 10,000 years after the Athabascans named it, an American gold miner started calling it Mount McKinley in order to get the attention of presidential candidate William McKinley whose political campaign endorsed the gold standard as the basis of our economy. Even though he won the election, McKinley had no claim to the highest peak in North America. The Athabascans, who had revered it for millennia, did. Welcome back, Denali!