This is an I-Heart podcast.

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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hello and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Tracy B. Wilson, and I'm Holly Fry.

This is part two of our podcast on Walter Harper and the Summiting of Denali.

In addition to Walter Harper, at this point, this expedition to the summit of Denali included Hudson Stuck, who funded the expedition,

Harry Carstens, who was the planner and led them out in the field,

and Robert Tatum and John Fredson.

So every day, three men would go ahead,

and they would stake out a trail using willow shoots

that they had brought up from lower elevations.

And then two of those three men were typically Carstons and Harper.

And then while they did this, the other two men would work with the sled dogs to move all of their gear along that trail.

Stuck described Harper as running close to Carstons in strength pluck and endurance, and Stuck credited Harper as running close to Carstyn's and strength pluck in endurance,

and Stuck credited Harper with keeping the party's morale up.

So in Stuck's words, quote,

he took gleefully to high mountaineering,

while his kindliness and invincible amiability endeared him to every member of the party.

We don't usually like like, give a heads up that the person that we are talking about in an

episode is going to die because this is a history podcast and that's inevitable.

But Walter Harper's death was sudden and tragic and at a very early age.

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