Mount Saint Elias - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Mount Saint Elias may also refer to Mount Carmel
Mount Carmel
Mount Carmel ; , Kármēlos; , Kurmul or جبل مار إلياس Jabal Mar Elyas 'Mount Saint Elias') is a coastal mountain range in northern Israel stretching from the Mediterranean Sea towards the southeast. Archaeologists have discovered ancient wine and oil presses at various locations on Mt. Carmel...

Mount Saint Elias, also designated Boundary Peak 186, is the second highest mountain

Mountain

Image:Himalaya_annotated.jpg|thumb|right|The Himalayan mountain range with Mount Everestrect 58 14 160 49 Chomo Lonzorect 200 28 335 52 Makalurect 378 24 566 45 Mount Everestrect 188 581 920 656 Tibetan Plateaurect 250 406 340 427 Rong River...

in both Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

and the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, being situated on the Yukon

Yukon

Yukon is the westernmost and smallest of Canada's three federal territories. It was named after the Yukon River. The word Yukon means "Great River" in Gwich’in....

and Alaska

Alaska

Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...

border. It lies about 40 kilometres (25 mi) southwest of Mount Logan

Mount Logan

Mount Logan is the highest mountain in Canada and the second-highest peak in North America, after Mount McKinley . The mountain was named after Sir William Edmond Logan, a Canadian geologist and founder of the Geological Survey of Canada . Mount Logan is located within Kluane National Park and...

, the highest mountain in Canada. The Canadian side is part of Kluane National Park, while the U.S. side of the mountain is located within Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve

Wrangell–St. Elias National Park and Preserve is a United States National Park in southeastern Alaska. It was established in 1980 by the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. The park area is included in an International Biosphere Reserve and is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site...

.

Its name in Tlingit

Tlingit language

The Tlingit language ) is spoken by the Tlingit people of Southeast Alaska and Western Canada. It is a branch of the Na-Dené language family. Tlingit is very endangered, with fewer than 140 native speakers still living, all of whom are bilingual or near-bilingual in English...

is Yaas'éit'aa Shaa, meaning "mountain behind Icy Bay", and is occasionally called Shaa Tléin "Big Mountain" by the Yakutat

Yakutat

Yakutat may refer to:Geography*Yakutat Airport, a state-owned public-use airport in Alaska in the United States*Yakutat Bay, a bay on the coast of Alaska*Yakutat City and Borough, Alaska, a unified city-borough in AlaskaGeology...

Tlingit. It is one of the most important crests of the Kwaashk'khwáan clan

Tlingit clans

The Tlingit clans of Southeast Alaska, in the United States, are one of the indigenous cultures within Alaska. The Tlingit people also live in the Northwest Interior of British Columbia, Canada, and in the southern Yukon Territory...

since they used it as a guide during their journey down the Copper River

Copper River (Alaska)

The Copper River or Ahtna River is a 300-mile river in south-central Alaska in the United States. It drains a large region of the Wrangell Mountains and Chugach Mountains into the Gulf of Alaska...

. Mount Fairweather

Mount Fairweather

Mount Fairweather , is one of the world's highest coastal mountains at 4,671 metres It is located east of the Pacific Ocean on the border of Alaska, United States and western British Columbia, Canada...

at the apex of the British Columbia and Alaska borders at the head of the Alaska Panhandle

Alaska Panhandle

Southeast Alaska, sometimes referred to as the Alaska Panhandle, is the southeastern portion of the U.S. state of Alaska, which lies west of the northern half of the Canadian province of British Columbia. The majority of Southeast Alaska's area is part of the Tongass National Forest, the United...

is known as Tsalxhaan, it is said this mountain and Yaas'éit'aa Shaa (Mt. St. Elias) were originally next to each other but had an argument and separated. Their children, the mountains in between the two peaks, are called Tsalxhaan Yatx'i ("Children of Tsalxaan").

The mountain was first sighted by European explorers on July 16, 1741 by Vitus Bering

Vitus Bering

Vitus Jonassen Bering Vitus Jonassen Bering Vitus Jonassen Bering (also, less correNavy]], a captain-komandor known among the Russian sailors as Ivan Ivanovich. He is noted for being the first European to discover Alaska and its Aleutian Islands...

of Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

. While some historians contend that the mountain was named by Bering, others believe that eighteenth century mapmakers named it after Cape Saint Elias

Cape Saint Elias

Cape Saint Elias is a cape in the U.S. state of Alaska. It is located at the southwest end of Kayak Island, 104 km southeast of Cordova, at . It is commonly believed that Mount Saint Elias, the second highest mountain in the United States and Canada, is named for this landform.The cape was...

, when it was left unnamed by Bering.

Mount Saint Elias is notable for being the highest peak in the world that is so close to tidewater; its summit rises only 10 miles (16.1 km) from the head of Taan Fjord, off of Icy Bay. This gives the peak immense vertical relief

Terrain

Terrain, or land relief, is the vertical and horizontal dimension of land surface. When relief is described underwater, the term bathymetry is used...

, comparable to that of Mount McKinley

Mount McKinley

Mount McKinley or Denali in Alaska, United States is the highest mountain peak in North America and the United States, with a summit elevation of above sea level. It is the centerpiece of Denali National Park and Preserve.- Geology and features :Mount McKinley is a granitic pluton...

(Denali) or peaks in the Himalayas

Himalayas

The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...

.

In 2007, a documentary movie called "Mount. St. Elias" was made about a team of skiier/mountaineers determined to make "the planet's longest skiing descent" – ascending the mountain and then skiing nearly all 18,000 feet down to the Gulf of Alaska; the movie finished editing and underwent limited release in 2009. The climbers ended up summiting on the second attempt and skiing down to 13,000 feet.

Climbing history

Mt. St. Elias was first climbed on July 31, 1897 by an expedition led by famed explorer Prince Luigi Amadeo di Savoia

Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi

Prince Luigi Amedeo Giuseppe Maria Ferdinando Francesco di Savoia-Aosta , Duke of the Abruzzi , was an Italian nobleman, mountaineer and explorer of the royal House of Savoy...

, (who also reconnoitered the current standard route on K2

K2 is the second-highest mountain on Earth, after Mount Everest...

) and including noted mountain photographer Vittorio Sella

Vittorio Sella

Vittorio Sella was an Italian photographer and mountaineer, who took photographs of mountains which are regarded as some of the finest ever made....

.

The second ascent was not until 1946, when a group from the Harvard Mountaineering Club

Harvard Mountaineering Club

The Harvard Mountaineering Club is an undergraduate organization of Harvard College. Founded in 1924, the HMC is one of the oldest college mountaineering clubs in the USA, with a long record of exploratory mountaineering.-Early history:...

including noted mountain historian Dee Molenaar

Dee Molenaar

Dee Molenaar is an American mountaineer, author and artist from Burley, Washington. He is best known as the author of The Challenge of Rainier, first published in 1971 and considered the definitive work on the climbing history of Mount Rainier....

climbed the Southwest Ridge route. The summit party comprised Molenaar, his brother Cornelius, Andrew and Betty Kauffman, Maynard Miller, William Latady, and Benjamin Ferris. (This expedition was somewhat unusual for the era in including a female member.) William Putnam was a member of the expedition but did not make the summit. They used eleven camps, eight of which were on the approach from Icy Bay, and three of which were on the mountain. They were supported by multiple air drops of food.

Mount Saint Elias is infrequently climbed today, despite its height, due to the typically terrible weather conditions engendered by its proximity to the ocean.

External links

Mt. St. Elias on Peakware

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Climbing history

See also

Works cited

External links