Obama to rename tallest U.S. peak in historic Alaska visit

Jim Acosta
By Jim Acosta, CNN
Updated 12:57 PM EDT, Mon August 31, 2015
After a 45-minute flight on a small ski plane, climbers land at Kahiltna Base Camp, sometimes called Kahiltna International Airport because climbers from all over the world fly in to attempt to climb Alaska's Denali, formerly known as Mount McKinley. At 20,237 feet it's the highest peak in North America.
PHOTO: Ben Adkison/CNN
Climbing Denali: Base camp —
After a 45-minute flight on a small ski plane, climbers land at Kahiltna Base Camp, sometimes called Kahiltna International Airport because climbers from all over the world fly in to attempt to climb Alaska's Denali, formerly known as Mount McKinley. At 20,237 feet it's the highest peak in North America.
The longest section of the West Buttress route on Denali follows the Kahiltna Glacier and winds through ridges of rock and ice and crevasse fields as it gains elevation.
PHOTO: Ben Adkison/CNN
Lower mountain —
The longest section of the West Buttress route on Denali follows the Kahiltna Glacier and winds through ridges of rock and ice and crevasse fields as it gains elevation.
There's no such thing as "light and fast" on Denali. With the food, fuel and cold-weather clothing required for a three-week expedition, packs can weigh 60-80 pounds. Until much of the food and fuel is spent on lower elevations, climbers use sleds to haul gear up the mountain.
PHOTO: Ben Adkison/CNN
Sleds and packs —
There's no such thing as "light and fast" on Denali. With the food, fuel and cold-weather clothing required for a three-week expedition, packs can weigh 60-80 pounds. Until much of the food and fuel is spent on lower elevations, climbers use sleds to haul gear up the mountain.
While only halfway up to the peak, from base camp, the established camp at 14,200 feet is thought of as the advanced base camp and launching point for high camp and the summit. Elaborate camps are set up with snow walls and kitchen tents dug into the snow.
PHOTO: Ben Adkison/CNN
At 14,200 feet —
While only halfway up to the peak, from base camp, the established camp at 14,200 feet is thought of as the advanced base camp and launching point for high camp and the summit. Elaborate camps are set up with snow walls and kitchen tents dug into the snow.
After leaving the advanced base camp, climbers clip themselves into a section of ropes attached to the snow and ice. These ropes, called fixed lines, allow climbers to safely ascend the steep and icy slope between 15,000 and 16,000 feet.
PHOTO: Ben Adkison/CNN
Fixed lines —
After leaving the advanced base camp, climbers clip themselves into a section of ropes attached to the snow and ice. These ropes, called fixed lines, allow climbers to safely ascend the steep and icy slope between 15,000 and 16,000 feet.
Denali rises 3,000 feet above Mount Foraker, the second tallest mountain in the Alaska Range, and nearly 10,000 feet above many of the other surrounding peaks. Climbers can look down on much of the climbing route as if they're in an airplane flying over the mountains.
PHOTO: Ben Adkison/CNN
Above it all —
Denali rises 3,000 feet above Mount Foraker, the second tallest mountain in the Alaska Range, and nearly 10,000 feet above many of the other surrounding peaks. Climbers can look down on much of the climbing route as if they're in an airplane flying over the mountains.
The ridge that traverses from the top of the fixed lines to high camp is one of the most technically challenging parts of the West Buttress route. It requires steep snow climbing and crossing narrow, knife-edge sections all while wearing a heavy pack.
PHOTO: Ben Adkison/CNN
Treacherous section —
The ridge that traverses from the top of the fixed lines to high camp is one of the most technically challenging parts of the West Buttress route. It requires steep snow climbing and crossing narrow, knife-edge sections all while wearing a heavy pack.
Situated on a small plateau at 17,200 feet, high camp is the last stop before a summit push. Due to the thin air at this high elevation, climbers ideally stay here only a night or two to keep their strength up for the 3,000-foot summit push.
PHOTO: Ben Adkison/CNN
High camp —
Situated on a small plateau at 17,200 feet, high camp is the last stop before a summit push. Due to the thin air at this high elevation, climbers ideally stay here only a night or two to keep their strength up for the 3,000-foot summit push.
Starting mid-morning, to avoid the bitter cold of night and early morning, a summit bid can range from 8 to 18 hours. Calm winds and clear weather are essential for a safe summit day because frostbite and high-altitude illness are real dangers high on the mountain.
PHOTO: Ben Adkison/CNN
Summit day —
Starting mid-morning, to avoid the bitter cold of night and early morning, a summit bid can range from 8 to 18 hours. Calm winds and clear weather are essential for a safe summit day because frostbite and high-altitude illness are real dangers high on the mountain.
Each year only about half of the 1,000 or so climbers who attempt Denali make it to the summit. Unless you're an experienced mountaineer with cold weather experience it's best to join the roughly 50% of climbers who go on guided expeditions. There are five guide companies, including Mountain Trip, licensed to guide on Denali. The gallery's photographer and author, Ben Adkison, is in the rear left of the photo.
PHOTO: Ben Adkison/CNN
Summit —
Each year only about half of the 1,000 or so climbers who attempt Denali make it to the summit. Unless you're an experienced mountaineer with cold weather experience it's best to join the roughly 50% of climbers who go on guided expeditions. There are five guide companies, including Mountain Trip, licensed to guide on Denali. The gallery's photographer and author, Ben Adkison, is in the rear left of the photo.

Story highlights

President Barack Obama is traveling to Alaska to discuss climate change for the week

He will be renaming the country's tallest mountain from Mt. McKinley to Denali

(CNN) —  

To hear the White House describe Alaska, the state has become the canary in the climate change coal mine, complete with raging wildfires, accelerating ice melt in the arctic, vanishing glaciers and whole villages forced to relocate away from rising seas.

President Barack Obama will carry that urgent message to Alaska this week in the hopes his long journey away from his busy agenda in Washington will begin to change the national conversation on global warming.

His first step while he’s there: officially renaming the country’s tallest mountain from Mt. McKinley to Denali, an historic nod to the region’s native population, which the White House says is under threat from the already-present threat of climate change.

“This is all real. This is happening to our fellow Americans right now,” Obama said in his weekly address Saturday.

All week long, Obama will try to call attention to Alaska as a kind of climate change ground zero. Whether it’s a hike on a melting glacier near the town of Seward or his visit with a fisherman in the remote coastal village of Dillingham, the President wants a distracted public to see the jarring effects of global warming through his own eyes.

To maximize the impact of the historic trip, which will make Obama the first sitting U.S. president to visit the arctic, the White House plans to devote all of the resources of its potent social media operation.

It’s also using the trip to formalize the Denali name change, which native Alaskans have sought for decades. Named McKinley in 1896, shortly after President William McKinley was nominated as a candidate for office, the 20,320-foot peak has long been known locally as Denali, its name in the indigenous Athabascan language.

The national park that surrounds the mountain was named Denali in 1980, but the peak itself is still listed in official federal documents as McKinley. Past attempts to make the change were blocked by lawmakers from McKinley’s home state of Ohio.

Political leaders across Alaska, including both U.S. senators and the governor, backed the name change.

RELATED: Why Ohio lawmakers don’t want Mt. McKinley renamed Denali

Obama is set to meet Monday with members of the native population to discuss ways the federal government can help them prepare for the effects of a changing climate, which the White House says include interrupted winter hunting seasons, newly hostile conditions for fish and wildlife and seawater encroaching on long-settled territory.

“The issue of climate change is not an issue of the future tense in Alaska, it is affecting people’s lives and their livelihoods in real ways,” White House senior adviser Brian Deese said in a preview of the three-day trip.

During a conference call with reporters, Deese laid out the administration’s latest data on the climate challenges facing Alaskans.

The arctic has warmed almost twice as fast as the rest of the world and portions of northern Alaska have lost a “football field’s worth of land a day to coast erosions and sea-level rise,” Deese said.

Fourteen years after traveling to Kenya for the first time, Barack Obama received a warm welcome when he and his family visited in August 2006.
Photos: Then-Senator Barack Obama's trip to Kenya
Fourteen years after traveling to Kenya for the first time, Barack Obama received a warm welcome when he and his family visited in August 2006.
Arriving on East African Express Airlines, Obama stepped off to far less fanfare than when he will later descend the steps of Air Force One.
Photos: Then-Senator Barack Obama's trip to Kenya
Arriving on East African Express Airlines, Obama stepped off to far less fanfare than when he will later descend the steps of Air Force One.
A safari in the Maasai Mara National Reserve was one of the side trips on Obama's 17-day, six-nation tour of Africa in 2006.
Photos: Then-Senator Barack Obama's trip to Kenya
A safari in the Maasai Mara National Reserve was one of the side trips on Obama's 17-day, six-nation tour of Africa in 2006.
On the lookout for wild game, Obama and his family set off across the Maasai Mara. A lion kill was the day's highlight.
Photos: Then-Senator Barack Obama's trip to Kenya
On the lookout for wild game, Obama and his family set off across the Maasai Mara. A lion kill was the day's highlight.
Artwork sprouted up across Kenya celebrating the ancestral roots of Obama, including this mural in Nairobi.
Photos: Then-Senator Barack Obama's trip to Kenya
Artwork sprouted up across Kenya celebrating the ancestral roots of Obama, including this mural in Nairobi.
Michelle Obama and the couple's two daughters, Sasha and Malia, joined a school dedication during the 2006 trip.
Photos: Then-Senator Barack Obama's trip to Kenya
Michelle Obama and the couple's two daughters, Sasha and Malia, joined a school dedication during the 2006 trip.
Obama and Malia, who he playfully called "Cool Breeze," enjoyed the scenery in rural Kenya.
Photos: Then-Senator Barack Obama's trip to Kenya
Obama and Malia, who he playfully called "Cool Breeze," enjoyed the scenery in rural Kenya.
Peace Corps volunteers from the United States were pleased to run into Obama in Kisumu, Kenya.
Photos: Then-Senator Barack Obama's trip to Kenya
Peace Corps volunteers from the United States were pleased to run into Obama in Kisumu, Kenya.
The Obama brand was popular across Africa, too, with these admirers holding up shirts as they watched Obama pass.
Photos: Then-Senator Barack Obama's trip to Kenya
The Obama brand was popular across Africa, too, with these admirers holding up shirts as they watched Obama pass.
Sarah Obama, the matriarch of the family, welcomed Obama to her home in Kogelo. She was the stepmother of his father, Barack Obama Sr.
Photos: Then-Senator Barack Obama's trip to Kenya
Sarah Obama, the matriarch of the family, welcomed Obama to her home in Kogelo. She was the stepmother of his father, Barack Obama Sr.
Large crowds gathered across Kenya to welcome Obama, who received too many gifts to bring home to the United States.
Photos: Then-Senator Barack Obama's trip to Kenya
Large crowds gathered across Kenya to welcome Obama, who received too many gifts to bring home to the United States.
Five months before announcing his presidential bid, Obama sat in a Nairobi school and discussed the hopes and dreams of students.
Photos: Then-Senator Barack Obama's trip to Kenya
Five months before announcing his presidential bid, Obama sat in a Nairobi school and discussed the hopes and dreams of students.
The Nation, the premiere newspaper in Nairobi, treated the freshman senator's visit as major news.
Photos: Then-Senator Barack Obama's trip to Kenya
The Nation, the premiere newspaper in Nairobi, treated the freshman senator's visit as major news.

Wildfires have scorched “5 million acres of land, which is approximately the size of my home state of Massachusetts,” he added.

Obama will deliver remarks at a conference of arctic nations in Anchorage to foreign ministers representing counties with a vested interest in the region. Secretary of State John Kerry, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and other top administration officials are also making the 4,000-mile plus journey for the gathering.

The foreign policy implications of a changing arctic are quickly coming into focus for the Obama administration, as Russia is increasingly behaving like a military rival in the area.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think-tank recently warned Moscow is boosting its military presence in the arctic, dubbing the Russian ambitions as “the ice curtain.”

The rapid ice melt in the Arctic is more than just a military concern. There are also vital economic considerations, as the evolving climate is opening up new shipping opportunities over the top of the world for counties from China to Scandinavia.

But for fishermen who have relied on the predictability of Alaska’s frigid temperatures for generations, the stakes are much higher. As the President noted in his weekly address, the state’s independent governor warns four Alaskan villages are in “imminent danger” and must be relocated.

“Think about that. If another country threatened to wipe out an American town, we’d do everything in our power to protect ourselves,” Obama said in the address. “Climate change poses the same threat, right now.”

The consequences of climate change go far beyond warming temperatures, which scientists say are melting the polar ice caps and raising sea levels. Click through the gallery for a look at 10 other key effects of climate change, some of which may surprise you.
Photos: Effects of global warming around the world
PHOTO: Josef Friedhuber/Getty Images/File
Melting polar ice caps —
The consequences of climate change go far beyond warming temperatures, which scientists say are melting the polar ice caps and raising sea levels. Click through the gallery for a look at 10 other key effects of climate change, some of which may surprise you.
In the coming decades climate change will unleash megadroughts lasting 10 years or more, according to a new report by scholars at Cornell University, the University of Arizona and the U.S. Geological Survey. We're seeing hints of this already in many arid parts of the world and even in California, which has been rationing water amid record drought. In this 2012 photo, a man places his hand on parched soil in the Greater Upper Nile region of northeastern South Sudan.
Photos: Effects of global warming around the world
PHOTO: Julien Behal/PA Wire/AP/File
Drought —
In the coming decades climate change will unleash megadroughts lasting 10 years or more, according to a new report by scholars at Cornell University, the University of Arizona and the U.S. Geological Survey. We're seeing hints of this already in many arid parts of the world and even in California, which has been rationing water amid record drought. In this 2012 photo, a man places his hand on parched soil in the Greater Upper Nile region of northeastern South Sudan.
There's not a direct link between climate change and wildfires, exactly. But many scientists believe the increase in wildfires in the Western United States is partly the result of tinder-dry forests parched by warming temperatures. This photo shows a wildfire as it approaches the shore of Bass Lake, California, in mid-September.
Photos: Effects of global warming around the world
PHOTO: Darvin Atkeson/YosemiteLandscapes.com/AP
Wildfires —
There's not a direct link between climate change and wildfires, exactly. But many scientists believe the increase in wildfires in the Western United States is partly the result of tinder-dry forests parched by warming temperatures. This photo shows a wildfire as it approaches the shore of Bass Lake, California, in mid-September.
Scientists say the oceans' temperatures have risen by more than 1 degree Fahrenheit over the last century. It doesn't sound like much, but it's been enough to affect the fragile ecosystems of coral reefs, which have been bleaching and dying off in recent decades. This photo shows dead coral off the coast of St. Martin's Island in Bangladesh.
Photos: Effects of global warming around the world
PHOTO: Majority World/UIG/Getty Images/File
Coral reefs —
Scientists say the oceans' temperatures have risen by more than 1 degree Fahrenheit over the last century. It doesn't sound like much, but it's been enough to affect the fragile ecosystems of coral reefs, which have been bleaching and dying off in recent decades. This photo shows dead coral off the coast of St. Martin's Island in Bangladesh.
A U.N. panel found in March that climate change -- mostly drought -- is already affecting the global agricultural supply and will likely drive up food prices. Here, in 2010, workers on combines harvest soybeans in northern Brazil. Global food experts have warned that climate change could double grain prices by 2050.
Photos: Effects of global warming around the world
PHOTO: Andre Penner/AP/File
Food prices —
A U.N. panel found in March that climate change -- mostly drought -- is already affecting the global agricultural supply and will likely drive up food prices. Here, in 2010, workers on combines harvest soybeans in northern Brazil. Global food experts have warned that climate change could double grain prices by 2050.
Are you sneezing more often these days? Climate change may be to blame for that, too. Recent studies show that rising temperatures and carbon dioxide levels promote the growth of weedy plant species that produce allergenic pollen. The worst place in the United States for spring allergies in 2014, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America? Louisville, Kentucky.
Photos: Effects of global warming around the world
PHOTO: GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP/Getty Images/File
Pollen allergies —
Are you sneezing more often these days? Climate change may be to blame for that, too. Recent studies show that rising temperatures and carbon dioxide levels promote the growth of weedy plant species that produce allergenic pollen. The worst place in the United States for spring allergies in 2014, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America? Louisville, Kentucky.
Climate change has not been kind to the world's forests. Invasive species such as the bark beetle, which thrive in warmer temperatures, have attacked trees across the North American west, from Mexico to the Yukon. University of Colorado researchers have found that some populations of mountain pine beetles now produce two generations per year, dramatically boosting the bugs' threat to lodgepole and ponderosa pines. In this 2009 photo, dead spruces of the Yukon's Alsek River valley attest to the devastation wrought by the beetles.
Photos: Effects of global warming around the world
PHOTO: Rick Bowmer/AP/File
Deforestation —
Climate change has not been kind to the world's forests. Invasive species such as the bark beetle, which thrive in warmer temperatures, have attacked trees across the North American west, from Mexico to the Yukon. University of Colorado researchers have found that some populations of mountain pine beetles now produce two generations per year, dramatically boosting the bugs' threat to lodgepole and ponderosa pines. In this 2009 photo, dead spruces of the Yukon's Alsek River valley attest to the devastation wrought by the beetles.
The snows capping majestic Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest peak, once inspired Ernest Hemingway. Now they're in danger of melting away altogether. Studies suggest that if the mountain's snowcap continues to evaporate at its current rate, it could be gone in 15 years. Here, a Kilimanjaro glacier is viewed from Uhuru Peak in December 2010.
Photos: Effects of global warming around the world
PHOTO: Chris Jackson/Getty Images for Laureus/File
Mountain glaciers —
The snows capping majestic Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest peak, once inspired Ernest Hemingway. Now they're in danger of melting away altogether. Studies suggest that if the mountain's snowcap continues to evaporate at its current rate, it could be gone in 15 years. Here, a Kilimanjaro glacier is viewed from Uhuru Peak in December 2010.