Denali

Where is Denali?

Denali is part of the Alaska Range.

You will find it in: United States.

Summit: 63.069° N, 151.006° W

The story behind it

Denali is a huge granite massif, slowly squeezed upward over millions of years by pressure between tectonic plates, then carved into its jagged shape by giant glaciers that still cover much of it today. Few people live anywhere near it; the closest communities are small Alaska Native villages that have called the mountain Denali for generations, long before it was renamed Mount McKinley in 1917 and then officially changed back in 2015. Climbing it is a serious cold-weather challenge, since temperatures can plunge below minus 40°C even in summer, and most expeditions take two to three weeks hauling sledges of gear across glaciers. Here is the surprising part: although Everest is taller overall, Denali actually rises higher from its own base to summit than Everest does, because Everest starts from a high plateau while Denali erupts almost straight up from low ground.

Find it on the globe

Denali is there as a small peak with its own shape — a horn, a ridge, a volcano — standing on the surface. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.