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Walter Harper (1893 – October 25, 1918) was a mountain climber and guide of mixed white and Alaska Native ancestry. On Saturday, 7 June 1913, he was the first person to reach the summit of Denali (Mount McKinley), the highest mountain in North America. He was followed by the other members of the small expedition team, guide Harry Karstens, Episcopal archdeacon Hudson Stuck, who had organized the effort, and Episcopal missionary Robert Tatum.
After gaining more formal education, Harper married in 1918 and planned to attend medical school in Philadelphia. He and his wife took the steamer from Skagway to Seattle for their honeymoon before setting off cross-country. The ship ran aground on a reef in a snowstorm, and was broken up in a gale, sinking on October 25. All 268 passengers and 75 crew were lost.
The couple separated permanently in 1895, and Arthur Harper left the area. He died of tuberculosis in 1897. Jennie reared Walter as a Koyukon. All the older Harper children had been sent for education to boarding schools "Outside", mostly in San Francisco, California. Harper's partners also adopted this practice for their mixed-race children.
At the age of 16, Walter Harper started attending Tortella School, an Episcopal boarding school associated with St. Marks Mission in Nenana, Alaska. Guide to Collection: St. Mark's Mission, Nenana, Alaska; "Biographical/Historical Note", 2010, State of Alaska Library, accessed 22 September 2013 There he met Hudson Stuck, Episcopal archdeacon of the Yukon, who served a large area of the Interior as a missionary. Stuck was impressed by Harper's intelligence, manners, and skills in fishing, tracking, trapping, fire-building, and dog handling. He hired him to work as his interpreter, guide, and dog driver. He also encouraged him to continue with his formal education.
On March 17, 1913, the expedition left from Nenana to climb Denali. The first day, they hiked along the Tanana River valley with two sleds of supplies, pulled by fourteen dogs. The journey up the river to Eureka took eight days; there, they replenished supplies and celebrated Easter.
It took them several weeks to reach their final camp; their journey had been much longer than expected. They had made it through the steep, crevasse-filled Muldrow Glacier, and endured a tent fire. It then took them three weeks to get through the Karstens Ridge, where the trail was blocked by huge rocks and blocks of ice thrown up by an earthquake the year before. They also survived a icefall. On June 6, they arrived at their final camp at an elevation of , the highest camp ever established in North America.
At 4:00 a.m. the next morning, the climbers left camp for their final summit attempt. At 1:30 p.m., the party reached the top of Denali, an elevation of . Harper was the first to gain the summit. The team spent an hour and a half on the summit, during which Tatum planted a flag he had made earlier from handkerchiefs. He compared the view to "looking out of a window of heaven". Stuck ensured they also put up a six-foot cross.
After taking readings from their instruments to establish the height of the mountain, the party began the descent. Compared to the 50-day journey up the mountain, it took them just two days to make it back to base camp. The expedition returned to Tanana on June 20, three months and four days after they'd left.
A day later, as the ship was passing through Lynn Canal en route to Juneau, it encountered a strong gale and heavy snow. Princess Sophia went off course and ship grounding on Vanderbilt Reef, the flat, rocky tip of an Seamount. Initially the sea was calm, but soon another gale began. The ship asked by radio for help, but neither ships nor small boats could get close enough to rescue the people aboard because of the dangerous conditions. After about 40 hours, Princess Sophia broke apart and sank on October 25, killing all 268 passengers and 75 crew, a total of 343 persons lost, including Walter and Frances.
After the Harpers' bodies were recovered, the couple was buried side by side in Juneau.
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