Denali National Park Trivia
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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
Denali, in Alaska, is the highest peak in North America; the park and preserve around it cover more than six million acres of Interior Alaska.
Q 02How high is Denali's summit, according to the 2015 survey?
20,310 feet
The 2015 USGS survey measured Denali's summit at 20,310 feet, ten feet below the 1953 figure; its roughly 18,000-foot rise from base to summit exceeds Everest's.
Q 03What name did the park carry from 1917 until 1980?
Mount McKinley
The park opened in 1917 as Mount McKinley National Park; the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act merged it with the surrounding national monument and renamed the enlarged unit Denali National Park and Preserve.
Q 04What does 'Denali' mean in the Athabaskan language?
The high one
In Koyukon Athabaskan the mountain is Deenaalee, 'the high one'; Alaska's geographic names board adopted Denali in 1975, four decades before the federal government did the same.
Q 05Which president directed the Interior Secretary to officially rename the mountain Denali in August 2015?
Barack Obama
Barack Obama announced the change on 30 August 2015, on the eve of an Alaska visit, and Interior Secretary Sally Jewell signed the order; a January 2025 executive order reversed it for the peak but not the park.
Q 06Which conservationist first proposed a national park around Denali?
Charles Sheldon
Charles Sheldon, a hunter-naturalist, campaigned through the Boone and Crockett Club for a game refuge around the mountain; Alaska delegate James Wickersham carried the bill, and the park was created in 1917.
Q 07Which president signed the bill creating the park on 26 February 1917?
Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson signed the act on 26 February 1917; Congress appropriated no money for the new park until 1921, so it went four years without a single employee.
Q 08Which president visited the park in July 1923 while touring the Alaska Railroad?
Warren G. Harding
Warren G. Harding rode the new Alaska Railroad north, drove its golden spike at Nenana on 15 July 1923 and stopped at the park's rail station; he died in San Francisco on 2 August.
Q 09Who made the first verified ascent of Denali's true summit on 7 June 1913?
Stuck, Karstens, Harper and Tatum
Archdeacon Hudson Stuck organised the expedition, Harry Karstens led the climbing, and Harper and Tatum completed the party that reached the true summit on 7 June 1913; Stuck's book The Ascent of Denali followed in 1914.
Q 10Who was the first person to actually set foot on Denali's summit in 1913?
Walter Harper
Walter Harper, whose mother was Koyukon Athabaskan, led the final steps and was first on top; he died in October 1918 when the steamer Princess Sophia sank near Juneau.
Q 11Which explorer's 1906 claim to have reached the summit is widely regarded as a hoax?
Frederick Cook
Frederick Cook claimed he and packer Ed Barrill reached the top in September 1906; his summit photograph was later shown to be of a minor bump on the Ruth Glacier, some 19 miles from the true summit.
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 Pete Anderson hauled the 14-foot spruce pole up the north peak on 3 April 1910 to fly a flag they hoped Fairbanks could see; the 1913 first-ascent party spotted it, and it was never seen again.
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
The Kahiltna Glacier runs about 44 miles down the south side of the range and hosts the climbers' base camp; the Ruth Glacier's Great Gorge holds ice some 3,800 feet thick.
Q 23Roughly what share of the park is covered by glaciers?
About 16 percent
Bradford Washburn led the first ascent of the West Buttress in 1951 after picking out the line from his aerial photographs; it became the standard route, replacing the longer Muldrow Glacier approach from the north.
Q 14How many climbers died in the 1967 blizzard on Denali, one of the deadliest US mountaineering accidents?
Seven
Seven members of the 12-man Wilcox expedition died high on the mountain in a July 1967 storm; the Park Service considered closing Denali to climbing afterwards but kept it open.
Q 15Where must climbers register and attend an orientation before attempting Denali?
Talkeetna
Every climber checks in at the Talkeetna Ranger Station, the hub of Denali mountaineering; ski-equipped air taxis then fly parties from Talkeetna's airstrip onto the glaciers at about 7,200 feet.
Q 16How long is the Denali Park Road, the only vehicle route into the park?
92 miles
The Park Road runs 92 miles west from the park entrance; only the first 15 miles, to Savage River, are paved and open to private cars, with park buses carrying visitors beyond.
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
Only about 30 percent of visitors get a clear look at the peak, a group the park calls the '30 Percent Club'; the mountain is so high that it makes its own clouds and weather.
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.
Glaciers cover about 16 percent of the park, roughly a million acres; the south side of the range carries most of the ice because moist Gulf of Alaska air drops its snow there first.
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
Park biologists put the north-side grizzly population at 300 to 350; with few salmon in the silty rivers, these bears feed mainly on roots, berries and ground squirrels and stay smaller than coastal grizzlies.
Q 26Which white-coated animal appears on the park's America the Beautiful quarter?
Dall sheep
The Denali quarter, 15th in the America the Beautiful series, shows a Dall sheep standing before the mountain; the rams' curled horns make them a favourite sighting along the Park Road.
Q 27What is the tree line elevation in the park, above which most of it is tundra?
About 2,500 feet
Tree line sits at only about 2,500 feet in the park, so spruce and willow cling to the lowlands around Wonder Lake while most of the land above is open tundra.
Q 28What is the park's only amphibian?
Wood frog
The wood frog is the park's only amphibian; it survives winter frozen solid, with glucose acting as antifreeze in its cells, and thaws out to breed in spring.
Q 29In 1992, Christopher McCandless died in an abandoned bus on which trail near the park?
Stampede
Christopher McCandless died in Fairbanks City Transit bus 142 on the Stampede Trail in August 1992; the bus, made famous by Into the Wild, was airlifted out in 2020 to the University of Alaska Museum of the North.
Q 30The Denali Fault, which runs the length of the park, is what type of fault?
Right-lateral strike-slip
The Denali Fault is a right-lateral strike-slip fault, the far side moving to the right as you face it; its November 2002 rupture shifted the ground about 14 feet at the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which was built on sliders and held.