Mount Denali (McKinley): The Politics of Identity Formation and Engagement with High Altitude Environments

Abstract

This thesis examines Mount Denali as a social and cultural field in which identity is constructed and reproduced among those who climb it or are positioned on its slopes. Through participant-observation, autoethnographic reflection, and grounded vignettes, it argues that high-altitude environments amplify the dynamics of social life, bringing light to what is overshadowed. Four interlocking chapters address naming practices and their relationship to colonialism; socioeconomic reproduction through bodily technique and the racialization of blue-collar identity; gender performance, suppression, and subversion at altitude; and the production of moral and ethical subjectivity through infrastructure and environmental governance. Together, they position Denali as a case study for how identity, when shaped by power, class, gender, and belonging, is made, contested, and occasionally undone in extreme environments.