Nature

Name: Denali National Park and Preserve
Brand: Shelby Carpenter
SKU: 9781467131704
Price: 24.99 USD
Availability: InStock

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Denali National Park and Preserve

Alaska's Whaling Coast

Paperback

$24.99

Denali National Park and Preserve

9781467131704

$24.99

Denali means The High One in Athabascan. Standing at 20,237 feet, Denali is the tallest mountain in North America and has roughly 14,000 feet of vertical relief from base camp to summit—more even than Mount Everest. While native populations had lived within the boundaries of today's Denali National Park and Preserve for over 7,000 years, white settlers only arrived en masse starting in the 1890s. When they did arrive, it was to chase after Denali's abundant game supply and placer gold in the Kantishna mining area. Only a handful of renegades made attempts on the peak at the turn of the century. Setting off with two thermoses of hot chocolate and six donuts—and a 14-foot spruce pole to set on the summit—the Sourdough Expedition reached the mountain's north peak in 1910. Today, Denali draws over a thousand climbers each year, and the park provides a safe haven for wildlife and a beautiful natural playground for other backpackers and explorers.

The Clara Nevada

9781609492885

$21.99

February 5, 1898. Witnesses report a giant orange fireball reflected in the glacial waters of Alaska's Lynn Canal. At the height of Klondike gold fever, the Clara Nevada disappeared into an epic storm— taking passengers and priceless cargo with her. Was the explosion an accident or a robbery gone wrong? Did Captain C.H. Lewis make off with $165,000 ($13.6 million in today's currency) in raw gold? Or was the sinking a case of a sea-weary steamer meeting an untimely end? Alaska historian Steven C. Levi combs the archives to piece together the true account of the Clara Nevada's final voyage, attempting to solve the riddle of the lost steamer that resurfaced ten years after that tragic night and became known as Alaska's ghost ship.

Alaska's Whaling Coast

9781467130240

$24.99

In 1850, commercial whaling ships entered the Bering Sea for the first time. There, they found the summer grounds of bowhead whales, as well as local Inuit people who had been whaling the Alaskan coast for 2,000 years. Within a few years, almost the entire Pacific fleet came north each June to find a path through the melting ice, and the Inuit way of whaling—in fact, their entire livelihood—would be forever changed. Baleen was worth nearly $5 a pound. But the new trading posts brought guns, alcohol, and disease. In 1905, a new type of whaling using modern steel whale-catchers and harpoon cannons appeared along the Alaskan coast. Yet the Inuit and Inupiat continue whaling today from approximately 15 small towns scattered along the Arctic Ocean and the Bering Strait. Whaling for these people is a life-or-death proposition in a land considered uninhabitable by many, for without the whale, whole villages probably could not survive as they have for centuries.