Denali 1913 Centennial Speaker Series premieres today

DENALI PARK — Denali National Park kicks off its Denali 1913 centennial speaker series with a presentation by award winning writer and photographer Tom Walker on the 1913 Ascent of Mount McKinley, the first successful ascent of the highest peak in North America, is set for 7 p.m., June 7 at the Denali Visitors Center.

Walker will highlight the integral role co-leader Harry Karstens played in the expedition’s success. Karstens’ role as the National Park’s first superintendent and his participation in the historic climb is the subject of Walker’s newest book, “The Seventymile Kid.”

This summer the National Park Service and park partner Alaska Geographic will host a special 1913 Centennial Speaker Series to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the first summit of Mt. McKinley.

By reaching the summit of the highest peak in North America on June 7, 1913, Walter Harper, Harry Karstens, Hudson Stuck and Robert Tatum made history.

This special series features presentations by five Alaskan mountaineers and historians on significant Denali mountaineering accomplishments. Each of the free, illustrated talks will take place at 7 p.m. in the Denali Visitor Center’s Karstens Theater and are free of charge.

Other presentations in the series include:

• June 21 — Alaska Denali Guiding co-founder and mountaineer Brian Okonek will speak about artist and adventurer Belmore Brown and the epic 1912 expedition into the Alaska Range Browne undertook with Professor Herschel Parker, Arthur Aten and Merl LaVoy on a quest to be the first to reach the south summit. The expedition members, who began their journey from Seward traveling by dog sled, made it to within 125 feet of the 20,320-foot summit before they were turned back by extreme winds.

• July 12 — Retired National Park Service cultural anthropologist Jane Bryant will introduce a 40-minute narrated film of the 1932 Lindley-Liek Expedition, which accomplished the first summit of the south peak since the 1913 Stuck-Karstens Expedition. The film contains the first filmed footage of a Mt. McKinley climb, and features expedition members Park Superintendent Harry Liek, Park Ranger Grant Pearson, climb organizer Alfred Lindley and ski enthusiast Erling Strom.

• Aug. 9 — Mountaineer and retired Denali State Park ranger Dave Johnston will do a slide presentation on his winter mountaineering experiences on Mt. McKinley and Mt. Foraker. Johnston made history by being part of the expedition to make the first winter ascent of Mt. McKinley on Feb. 28, 1967. He, Art Davidson and Ray Genet battled high winds, massive snowfall and brutal temperatures to reach the summit. On the descent, they endured additional hardships, as a storm with calculated wind-chill temperatures of -148 degrees kept the team trapped in an ice cave for six days.

• Aug. 23 — Dr. Terrence Cole, professor of History and Northern Studies at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, will speak about the Sourdough Expedition of 1910, which on April 3 became the first to reach the north peak of Mt. McKinley. This group of four gold miners challenged the peak with the most rudimentary gear and no technical climbing experience. They set out in order to disprove explorer Frederick Cook’s claim of reaching the summit in 1906 and demonstrate that Alaskans could outdo the exploits of any “Easterners.”

For more information, visit nps.gov/dena.