Amateurs Reached America’s Highest Peak First. Nobody Believed Them.

In 1910, a group of inexperienced climbers claimed to have summited Denali, the highest peak in what is now the United States. Their story was greeted with skepticism.

So when I found out that the first people to reach the highest point in North America (Denali, the mountain formerly known as McKinley) were just a bunch of Average Joes with no climbing experience who went up on a bet, I was flabbergasted. How had I never heard this story? The more I looked into it, the more fantastic the story became. When these guys descended from the mountain, nobody believed they really even made it. And they wouldn’t be the first people to fraudulently claim to have reached the top, with no evidence to offer that they succeeded. This story has all the makings of a blockbuster action comedy. It’s almost unbelievable.

But later evidence suggests that they just might have made it to the top.

• climbing
• David Friedman
• Denali
• sports
• video