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Kantishna

Mushers, Miners, Mountaineers

By Tom Walker

Cover of Kantishna By Tom WalkerIn the aftermath of the 1898 Klondike gold rush, North America's "last great adventure,"  hardy pioneers forged through trackless wilderness on foot or by dogteam to prospect every remote drainage in Interior Alaska. A chance discovery of gold in the Kantishna hills in 1905 sparked a wild stampede for riches. The rush to the Mt. McKinley region lured hundreds of people. Some got rich, others went broke, and a few died in the sullen, silent places in the very shadow of North America's tallest peak.

One of those Klondike veterans was Harry Karstens, who one day would play a significant role in establishing the rule of law in the new Mt. McKinley National Park. His battle for park protection was titanic.

The Kantishna is rife with stories of courage, loyalty, and challenges met head-on. Bouts with wild beasts, isolation, disease, accidents, and cosmic cold. Here are too are darker tales-of armed robbery, attempted murder, suicide and insanity. Market hunters slaughtered the wildlife. Unscrupulous trappers poisoned animals for their fur.

Mt. McKinley drew adventurers of another sort. For a decade a few eastern sportsmen and sourdoughs challenged the icy slopes. They risked privation, frostbite, and death to be the first to reach the top. The stories of defeat and deception set the stage in 1913 for the ultimate triumph. A climb largely made possible by Karstens and his young assistant, Walter Harper.

Out of the detritus of the great Alaska/Yukon gold rushes emerged two men of a different stripe. Men of adventure and vision, rising above the lust for gold, proposed a national park where wildlife would be free of the epic slaughter that accompanied America's northern expansion. Carving a national park out of this wilderness would not be easy. Alaskans would fight to protect their way of life.

Here are stories of these hardy, sometimes desperate, pioneers, tales similar to those that inspired Robert Service and Jack London - only these stories are true.


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