Denali & the Alaska Range

Denali National Park covers six million acres of interior Alaska. It centers on Denali, at 20,310 feet the highest peak in North America, rising above the Alaska Range. The park is a landscape of tundra, braided glacial rivers, and boreal forest, home to grizzly bears, caribou, moose, wolves, and Dall sheep, reached by a single ribbon of road. We've come back three Junes running.

The glacier landing. The trip's high point is a flightseeing run into the Alaska Range — banking between snow-plastered peaks and setting down on a glacier deep in the mountains, the ice fractured into blue crevasse fields far below the summits.

From the park entrance. Based near the headquarters and the park road, we hiked out across the open tundra — spongy ground bright with wildflowers and berries — spotting moose along the road and in the meadows, with the white wall of the Alaska Range on the horizon.

The peak was named Mount McKinley by a gold prospector in 1896. In 2015 it was officially renamed Denali, restoring its traditional Koyukon Athabascan name, meaning "the tall one."