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Hudson Stuck | The Muldrow Glacier; Karstens in the foreground

From Indian Country Today:

It’s on for June. Family reunion at 20,000 feet. Don’t forget the axes, the rope—and the documentary guy.

At the summit of Denali this summer, blood descendants of the first climbing party to stand atop North America’s highest mountain are hoping to mark the 100-year anniversary by retracing the original route, ascending 20,320 feet.

The original climb a century ago was a feat powered in part by young Alaska Natives, and one of the aims of this year’s effort is to inspire Native youth through interactivity and live-blogging during the climb.

Walter Harper, a strong young Athabascan Indian, was the first person to reach the summit on June 7, 1913, in a party organized by Hudson Stuck and Harry Karstens. Here is how Stuck wrote of the moment in Scribner’s Magazine of November 1913: “Walter, who had been in the lead all day, was the first to scramble up: a Alaska Natives, he is the first human being to set foot upon the summit of Alaska’s great mountain and he had well earned the lifelong distinction.”

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The 2013 expedition is retracing the original Muldrow Glacier route. It takes about a week longer, starts way lower, has a higher difficulty rating than the West Buttress route, which was created 62 years ago. The group will be guided by Alaska Mountaineering School, which has already cached 16 boxes of supplies along the route, taken in by dogsled in early March.

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