Denali National Park is located in the heart of a curved mountain range about 600 miles long, on the Alaska Range. In the area of the McKinley Massif, the range is about six miles wide and is aligned, as a rule, from the north-east to south-west. This is the highest part of the range, with many peaks over 10,000 feet high. Elsewhere in the mountains, the mountains are generally from 7,000 to 9,000 feet high.
The centerpiece of these high mountains is Denali, the highest peak in North America, at an altitude of 20,320 feet. “Denali” means “high” in the local dialect of Atabaskan. Officially, the mountain is still called Mt. McKinley and visitors from the bottom 48 will know this as McKinley. However, to Alaska, the mountain is Denali. In terms of vertical relief or elevation from the bottom to the top, Denali is the highest mountain in the world.
Denali consists of a dome or pluton of granite. About 60 million years ago, during the Paleocene epoch, semi-liquid magma invaded the earth's crust and slowly cooled down underground to form McKinley pluton. Another pluto formed about 38 million years ago and resolved in the formation of the neighboring Denali peaks. After millennia, the sea covered the area where the park is today, and precipitated a lot of sediment.
Later, a tropical forest covered the area, which resulted in a coal plateau, which is now mined near the park. Sometimes geological forces forced the earth to rise and hide, leading to a metamorphic rock or rock that was transformed from one type of rock to another using heat or pressure, the sequences found in the park today.
More recently, about 5 million years ago, the Alaskan ridge began to rise; This is one of the youngest mountain ranges on earth. With elevation, erosion has come; rock layers over granite pluton McKinley were slowly picked out until the granite itself was exposed on the surface. The same can be said about the neighboring neighbor Denali. Foreker and other high peaks in the Alaska Range. Granite is a very hard, erosion resistant material. It is also slightly smaller than other stones, and therefore a bit more buoyant, which is why Denali rises above any other mountain in North America.
Denali's major fault of guilt also plays a role in the midst of Denali. The Denali Fault continues lateral and vertical displacement, as evidenced by many earthquakes in the region. The cliffs on the south side of the rift were raised many thousands of feet. The steep north side of Denali, known as the Uikersham Wall, rises 15,000 feet from its base and is the result of this relatively recent movement. In addition, the southern part of the plate slides to the west, the northern part - to the east. Interestingly, when Denali first began to climb, he was 200 miles east of his current location. After a few million years, these two pieces of plates slid 200 miles apart.
The highest and harshest peaks of the Denali National Park, such as Denali, Foreker Mountain and Mount Hunter, are carved out of granite rocks. On the southeastern side of the Denali in the area of the Sheldon Amphitheater and the Great Gorge, surrounding the upper part of the Ruth glacier, huge spiers and walls of granite hover thousands of feet above the ice. Granite Spears Cathedral in the southwestern part of the park in the mountains Kichatna - the highest niche of the vertical cliffs in North America.
