50 free Denali National Park trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Denali National Park trivia quiz covers the six-million-acre park and preserve in Interior Alaska built around the highest mountain in North America. Questions cover the peak itself (20,310 feet, an 18,000-foot base-to-summit rise, still growing a millimetre a year), the glaciers and permafrost, the wildlife counts of grizzlies, wolves, caribou and Dall sheep, and the strange fact that most visitors never see the mountain at all. History runs from the Athabaskan peoples through Charles Sheldon's 1906 idea, Woodrow Wilson's 1917 signature, the Sourdough expedition's spruce pole, the 1913 first ascent by Stuck, Karstens, Harper and Tatum, Frederick Cook's disputed claim, the 17-year building of the Park Road, the 1967 blizzard disaster, the McKinley-versus-Denali naming saga, Chris McCandless's bus and the Pretty Rocks landslide that has cut the road since 2021. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. If you enjoy this one, try our Alaska and US National Parks quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Denali is the highest mountain on which continent?
North America
The park sits in Interior Alaska, and the park and preserve together cover more than six million acres.
Q 02How high is Denali's summit, according to the 2015 survey?
20,310 feet
Its base-to-summit rise of about 18,000 feet is greater than Everest's, and the mountain is still rising about a millimetre a year.
Q 03What name did the park carry from 1917 until 1980?
Mount McKinley
The 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act merged it with the surrounding Denali National Monument and renamed the unit.
Q 04What does 'Denali' mean in the Athabaskan language?
The high one
Prospector William Dickey named the peak after president-elect William McKinley in 1897; Alaska switched back to Denali in 1980, but Washington did not follow until 2015.
Q 05Which president directed the Interior Secretary to officially rename the mountain Denali in August 2015?
Barack Obama
He used statutory authority to act when the Board on Geographic Names had stalled for 35 years; a 2025 executive order reverted the peak's name to McKinley but left the park's name alone.
Q 06Which conservationist first proposed a national park around Denali in 1906?
Charles Sheldon
He worked through the Boone and Crockett Club and Alaska's delegate James Wickersham; the bill took 11 years to become law.
Q 07Which president signed the bill creating the park on 26 February 1917?
Woodrow Wilson
Oddly, the original boundary took in part of the mountain but not its summit; expansions came in 1922, 1932 and 1947.
Q 08Which president visited the park in July 1923 while touring the Alaska Railroad?
Warren G. Harding
He stopped at McKinley Park Station beside the log park hotel, which had opened on Thanksgiving Day 1921 and burned down in 1972.
Q 09Who made the first verified ascent of Denali's true summit on 7 June 1913?
Stuck, Karstens, Harper and Tatum
The youngest member, aged 21 and the son of a Koyukon-Athabascan mother, was first to step on top; Stuck, an English-born priest, collapsed unconscious on arrival.
Q 10Who was the first person to actually set foot on Denali's summit in 1913?
Walter Harper
The ranger station where climbers register was renamed in his honour in 2013.
Q 11Which explorer's 1906 claim to have reached the summit is widely regarded as a hoax?
Frederick Cook
He and horseman Robert Barrill said they summited via the Ruth Glacier in 12 days; Cook had at least circled the whole mountain on his 1903 attempt.
Q 12What did the 1910 'Sourdough' miners carry to the top of Denali's north peak as proof?
A 14-foot spruce pole
Billy Taylor and Peter Anderson planted it near the summit of the 19,470-foot north peak on 3 April 1910; only one later party ever claimed to see it.
Q 13Who pioneered the West Buttress route up Denali in 1951?
Bradford Washburn
Q 21What is unique about the working dogs kept at park headquarters?
They are the only federally owned sled-dog kennel
Sled dogs have patrolled the park since 1922 to deter poachers; rangers still mush Alaskan huskies in winter and give demonstrations in summer.
Q 22What is the longest glacier in the park and in the whole range?
Kahiltna
It runs 44 miles; the Ruth is 3,800 feet thick and the Muldrow, on the north side, has surged twice in the last century.
Q 23Roughly what share of the park is covered by glaciers?
About 16 percent
It became the most popular way up and is considered the safest and easiest route; the earlier climbs had gone up the Muldrow Glacier from the north.
Q 14How many climbers died in the 1967 blizzard on Denali, one of the deadliest US mountaineering accidents?
Seven
The Park Service debated closing the mountain to climbing afterwards but kept it open.
Q 15Where must climbers register and attend an orientation before attempting Denali?
Talkeetna
The ranger station there, about 100 miles south of the park entrance, is the hub of mountaineering operations; air taxis land climbers on the glaciers.
Q 16How long is the Denali Park Road, the only vehicle route into the park?
92 miles
Only the first 15 miles to Savage River are paved and open to private cars; beyond that, permafrost makes paving impractical and buses take over.
Q 17The Park Road took how many years to build before its completion in 1938?
17
There was no road to the park entrance at all until the Denali Highway opened in 1957; visits jumped from 5,000 to 25,000 in two years.
Q 18Why was the Park Road closed beyond Mile 45 from August 2021?
A landslide accelerated by thawing permafrost
Crews had been dumping 100 truckloads of gravel a week to keep it open; the closure at Polychrome Pass was expected to last until at least summer 2027.
Q 19What share of visitors are commonly said to actually see the mountain?
About 30 percent
The peak makes its own weather; locals say 'the mountain is out' when it appears, and only about 10 percent see it clear from top to bottom.
Q 20What clever feature does the Eielson Visitor Center have for cloudy days?
An outline of the mountain etched on the window
The etching on the glass facing the peak shows exactly where Denali would be if you could see it; the centre sits at Mile 66, four hours in by bus.
The southeast side of the range carries more ice because Gulf of Alaska winds drop their snow there; many glaciers are losing up to 6.6 feet of water equivalent a year.
Q 24What is the 'Drunken Forest' on Denali's lower slopes?
Spruce trees tilted by shifting permafrost
Freeze-thaw cycles make the soil slide; near-surface permafrost has already dropped from about 75 percent of the park in the 1950s to around 50 percent.
Q 25Roughly how many grizzly bears live on the north side of the Alaska Range in the park?
300 to 350
That is about 70 per 1,000 square miles; black bears are far more numerous at around 2,700, and blueberries and soapberries make up most of their diet.
Q 26Which white-coated animal appears on the park's America the Beautiful quarter?
Dall sheep
The coin was the 15th in the series and shows the sheep against the mountain.
Q 27What is the tree line elevation in the park, above which most of it is tundra?
About 2,500 feet
Below it, spruce and willow dominate around Wonder Lake; the forest grows as a mosaic shaped by periodic fires.
Q 28What is the park's only amphibian?
Wood frog
Ten fish species share the waters, though the silty glacier-fed rivers are poor habitat; nearly 80 percent of the park's birds are migratory.
Q 29In 1992, Christopher McCandless died in an abandoned bus on which trail near the park?
Stampede
His story became the book and film Into the Wild; the 'Magic Bus 142' was airlifted out in 2020 and went to the University of Alaska museum in Fairbanks.
Q 30The Denali Fault, which runs the length of the park, is what type of fault?
Right-lateral strike-slip
More than 600 quakes a year are recorded in the park; a magnitude 7.9 shock in November 2002 ripped the surface for 209 miles but killed no one.