Mount Logan

Mount Logan is the highest mountain in Canada and, at 5,959 m, second in North America only to Denali. It is also one of the bulkiest mountains on the planet: it is believed to have the largest base circumference of any non-volcanic mountain on Earth, and its massif carries eleven peaks above 5,000 m. By topographic prominence it ranks sixth in the world. Tectonic uplift is still pushing it higher by a fraction of a millimetre a year, and its precise height was only fixed in 1992, when a Geological Survey of Canada team took GPS readings on the summit.

The mountain lies in the heart of the Saint Elias Mountains inside Kluane National Park and Reserve, less than 40 km from the Alaska border, and it feeds the Hubbard and Logan glaciers. It is hidden from most of the surrounding lowlands, which explains why it was first reported only in 1890, by the geologist Israel Russell during an expedition to Mount Saint Elias; he named it after William Logan, founder of the Geological Survey of Canada. Conditions on top are brutal: on the 5,000 m summit plateau winter air temperatures hover around minus 45 °C, and the ice cap reaches almost 300 m thick in places.

The first ascent is one of the great expedition stories. A Canadian, British and American team led by Albert MacCarthy walked some 200 km from the Pacific railhead and reached the summit on 23 June 1925; the whole trip from the town of McCarthy in Alaska and back took 65 days, and everyone returned, though several suffered bad frostbite. Hard routes followed, among them the Hummingbird Ridge in 1965. In 2020 Parks Canada tightened the rules after a string of costly rescues: no solo expeditions, no winter expeditions, and mandatory insurance covering search and rescue.

For almost every traveller Mount Logan is a sight rather than a climb. The park interior is only accessible on flightseeing tours or on a serious mountaineering or ski-touring expedition, and flights over the Icefield Ranges are the realistic way to see Canada's highest peaks and icefields up close.

Getting there

Kluane National Park and Reserve lies about 160 km west of Whitehorse along the Alaska Highway, and the town of Haines Junction is the usual base for visits and flightseeing. Whitehorse, about 290 km from the summit in a straight line, has Erik Nielsen Whitehorse International Airport (YXY). The closest airport as the crow flies is Yakutat (YAK) in Alaska, about 125 km away, but it is on the other side of the icefields and of no practical use to visitors.