Denali National Park United States

Legendary

The park is centered on Denali, the highest mountain in North America.

Photo by Alan Sandercock

Kid Rating:

Everest is the tallest mountain measured from sea level. But measured from its own base to its summit, Denali is taller.

Everest sits on a high plateau that already starts several miles up. Denali rises almost straight out of low, flat land, climbing about 18,000 feet from bottom to top.

The summit reaches 20,310 feet, the highest point in North America. That figure comes from a 2015 survey, when a team hauled GPS equipment to the top to measure it precisely.

The mountain is still growing. Two enormous slabs of the Earth's crust are pushing together underneath it, lifting the peak about one millimeter every year.

Local Koyukon Athabascan people have called the mountain Denali for generations, meaning "the tall one." On official U.S. maps it has also been called Mount McKinley at different points in history. The national park has kept the name Denali since 1980.

Ice covers about one sixth of the park, roughly a million acres. At least 40 named glaciers slide down from the peaks of the Alaska Range.

The biggest is the Kahiltna Glacier, about 44 miles long, the longest in the entire range. Climbers land on it by ski plane each spring to begin their climb up the mountain.

The park itself is enormous, over six million acres. That's larger than the entire state of New Hampshire.

It was protected on February 26, 1917, making it the first U.S. national park created specifically to protect wildlife. A naturalist named Charles Sheldon pushed for it, mainly to save the white Dall sheep living in the hills.

Sled dogs have worked here since 1922. Rangers still use dog teams to patrol the park in winter, when snow makes vehicles useless.

Ride the shuttle bus along the park road, since private cars can only drive the first stretch. Watch for grizzly bears, moose, caribou, and wolves from the bus windows. Stop by the sled dog kennels in summer to meet the working dogs and see a demonstration.