AN EXPLORATION TO MOUNT McKINLEY, AMERICA'S 

 HIGHEST MOUNTAIN." 



By Alfred H. Brooks. 



Alaska's southern shore line makes a ])road, crescentic sweep, embrac- 

 ing- that part of the northern Paciiic known as the '" Gulf of Alaska." 

 Of the many indentations which give this coast its jagged outline the 

 largest is Cook Inlet, a deep embajmient in the western arm of tlie 

 crescent, which stretches northward for 150 miles from the headlands 

 marking its entrance. There it receives the turbid waters of the 

 Sushitna River, laden with the silt of glaciers which have their source 

 in the great Alaskan Range lying northwest of the valle}". (See map, 

 plate II.) 



This Ak^skan Range curves in a rugged mass around the headwaters 

 of the Sushitna, forming the divide between the Cook Inlet drainage 

 on the south and the waters flowing into Bering Sea through the Kus- 

 kokwim and Yukon rivers on the north. The southern end of the 

 range lies in an unexplored region to the west of Cook Inlet, but 

 probably does not include any peaks over 7,00U or 8,000 feet high. 

 Toward the north its relief increases, culminating in Mount McKinley, 

 over 20.000 feet^ in altitude, and the highest mountain on the North 

 American continent. 



Strange as it ma}' seem, though this mountain has been known to 

 white men for upward of a century — it is plainly visible from tide 

 water at Cook Inlet and from many points in the Yukon Basin — 3'et 

 until ver}' recent years it did not appear on any map atid was barely 

 referied to in literature. When the famous navigator Captain Cook 

 in 1778 spent a few weeks exploring the inlet which now bears his 

 name, the clouds hung low, or the mountain would not have escaped 

 his attention. 



Vancouver, fifteen ^-ears later, while extending Cook's surveys in 

 the inlet, probabl}^ also had no view of it, though he distinctl}^ men- 

 tions the range. The Russians, who carried on their fur trade on this 



« Reprinted by permission from the Journal of Geography, Chicago, Vol. II, No. 

 9, November, 1903. Cojiyright, 1903, by E. M. Lehnerts. 



^The final adjustment of surveys has not yet been made, so that the exact altitudes 

 can nr)t now be given. 



SM i!,o3 27 ^ ^^" 



