Trump Just Renamed North America’s Highest Peak. These Climbers Will Still Call It “Denali.”

On Monday, January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to rename Alaska’s 20,310-foot Denali, the highest peak in North America. The mountain’s name will revert to Mount McKinley, named for William McKinley, the 25th President of the United States, who was assassinated on September 14, 1901.

The decree undoes the work of former President Barack Obama, who, in 2015 officially changed the name from Mount McKinley to Denali, the peak’s traditional name from the Koyukon Athabascan language, which is spoken by Alaska’s Native inhabitants. Denali translates as “the high one” or “the great one.”

The name change will take effect within 30 days. The name of Denali National Park and Preserve, where the mountain sits, will not change.

Policy wonks (and National Park Service employees) know that there has been infighting in Congress about the name of North America’s highest peak since at least 1975. That was the first year the state of Alaska petitioned to use the local name Denali instead of McKinley. Lawmakers from Ohio, McKinley’s home state, pushed back.

But how do the people whose lives and livelihoods depend on the mountain feel about Denali’s name change? We asked some of Denali’s, er McKinley’s, most prominent athletes, guides, and rangers.

Why Alaskans Prefer the Name Denali

The guides and mountaineers who spoke to Outside for this story expressed dismay at the name change.

“It’s worth mentioning that the President suggested doing this about six years ago,” says Mark Westman, an Alaska resident and former ranger on the mountain. “And he was told by Alaska’s two senators—both of whom are Republicans and both who are still the current senators—not to do that.”

Indeed, on Monday, January 21, Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, released a statement: “Our nation’s tallest mountain, which has been called Denali for thousands of years, must continue to be known by the rightful name bestowed by Alaska Koyukon Athabascans, who have stewarded the land since time immemorial.”

Guides and climbers echoed Murkowski’s sentiment—the importance of the name Denali lies in its connection to Alaska’s precolonial history, they said.

“The name Denali reflects a local cultural heritage here that predates the United States,” Westman says. “The name McKinley was an arbitrary name given for someone who had never even set foot here. He was from Ohio.”

Conrad Anker, who began climbing in the Alaska Range in 1987, said he was overjoyed when the peak’s Indigenous name was officially restored in 2015. Changing the name back, he said, makes no sense to outdoor enthusiasts, local Alaskans, or the region’s Indigenous population.

“It was fitting to honor the people of Alaska with the rightful name,” he said. “I think it’s worth noting that the vast majority of peaks in the Himalayas have local names.”

Guide Melissa Arnot Reid, the first American woman to ascend and descend Everest without supplemental oxygen, said that precolonial names such as Denali enhance a visitor’s connection to a place. That’s why she encourages her climbing clients to refer to peaks and regions by traditional names.

“Discovering what the local people call a place, and why, enhances our connection to that place,” she says.

Does Anyone Even Use the Name Mount McKinley?

Even before the 2015 name change, climbers and guides frequently used the peak’s Native name, guides told us. Westman, who first came to the peak in 1994, said that while the names were used interchangeably by locals back then, the preference was to call it Denali.

“There’s been a difference in the name Denali for, well, forever,” he said. “Native Alaskans were calling it Denali for thousands of years before anybody else came here. In the climbing community, it’s almost universal—I almost never hear anybody call it McKinley.”

In the days following the announcement, many Alaskan residents appear to agree. On Tuesday, January 21, the group Alaska Survey Research asked 1,816 adults in Alaska about the proposed name change. The survey found that 54 percent opposed it, while just 26 percent supported the change.

Ski mountaineer Kit DesLauriers, the first person to hike and then ski the Seven Summits, pointed out that even Alaska’s political leaders have used the name Denali publicly for decades. “With Denali, the traditional name has been the choice not only of Alaskan Native people, but also of the entire state including its political leadership since at least 1975,” she says.

Dave Hahn of RMI Mountain Guides, who has ascended the peak 25 times, said that the mountain is “big enough to handle however many names you want to throw at it.”

But he stressed that Denali felt like it was always the appropriate title within the climbing community. “I never felt that McKinley was wrong—it honored a president that was assassinated while in office,” he said. “But I think that Denali is truer to where the mountain is, and who the people around the mountain are, recognizing that it’s an Alaskan mountain and not a Washington D.C. mountain.”

Most People Will Still Say Denali

The sources who spoke to Outside for this story agreed on one thing: they will continue to call the peak by its Native name going forward.

“I intend to continue to refer to the great mountain as Denali for as long as I’m alive, and I encourage every other climber to do the same,” wrote author Jon Krakauer in an email. “Trump might be able to officially rename it, but he will never be able to force me to call it anything except Denali.”

Ultrarunner Jack Kuenzle, who in 2023 set the fastest known time for ascending the peak, echoed the sentiment.

“I can’t imagine anybody will be actually utilizing McKinley,” he said. “I’ve never heard it called that.”

Keith Sidle, who teaches mountaineering courses with the Alaska Mountaineering School, said the only thing he expects to see change is how the mountain is named on maps and signs. Sidle said his climbing buddies are already saying online that they will continue to use the Native name.

“It’s changing a name on a piece of paper, it’s not changing the mountain,” he said. “To the people that it really matters to, it’s not changing anything.”