Why Mount Logan is famous
Logan is the roof of Canada and the second-highest summit in North America, which places it among the "Seven Second Summits", the second-highest peaks of each continent. What sets it apart is bulk. Although some shield volcanoes are larger, Logan is believed to have the largest base circumference of any non-volcanic mountain on Earth; researchers from the University of Alberta describe a base more than 160 km around. On the south side it rises about 4,150 m above the flat Seward Glacier. Its top is a glaciated plateau about 20 km long and 5 km wide, from which rise a dozen summits above 5,000 m, among them Philippe Peak (5,925 m) and the East Peak (5,898 m). Eleven of the twelve highest summits in Canada belong to the Logan massif; the only outsider is Mount Saint Elias (5,489 m).
The mountain sits in the Icefield Ranges of the Saint Elias Mountains, part of the largest non-polar icefield in the world. The ice cap on the plateau is up to about 300 m thick, and the Hubbard and Logan glaciers start on its slopes; the Hubbard flows about 120 km to the sea at Disenchantment Bay in Alaska. Logan is also still growing: the collision of the Pacific and North American plates lifts it by roughly 0.35 mm a year.
Where it is and how to get there
Logan stands in the reserve part of Kluane National Park and Reserve, about 280 km west of Whitehorse, the capital of Yukon. Kluane is part of a cross-border UNESCO World Heritage Site with neighbouring parks in Alaska and British Columbia. No road or trail leads to the mountain. Parks Canada counts an hour or more by air, or one to two weeks overland from the nearest road.
Almost every expedition flies. Climbers gather in Whitehorse, drive about two hours along the Alaska Highway to Kluane Lake and board a ski-wheel plane at the Silver City airstrip or the Kluane Lake Research Station. Icefield Discovery, a small family-run operator at Silver City, flies a Pilatus Porter that carries four climbers with gear and a Helio Courier that carries two, from 1 April to 30 October; Mountain Madness uses the Ultima Thule air taxi from Kluane Lake for its guided trips. Parks Canada also lists aircraft at Whitehorse, Haines Junction and Burwash Landing and, from Alaska, at Haines and Ultima Thule Lodge, and keeps the current list of operators.
Non-climbers can see Logan from the air. Kluane Glacier Air Tours in Haines Junction offers a two-hour "Logan Super Tour" (about 660 dollars per person in 2026), and Icefield Discovery runs a 1.5-hour flight with a landing on a glacier in front of the mountain and a two-hour tour that circles it.
Routes
King Trench (west side). The normal route follows the line of the 1925 first ascent and takes most expeditions. It is not technically hard, rated Alaska grade II+, but it is long, cold and committing. Teams are flown to a base camp on the Quintino Sella Glacier at about 2,700 m (8,860 ft) and travel on skis, pulling sleds, with loads of 20–40 kg each. The lower glacier is often crossed at night when the snow bridges over crevasses are frozen hard. A typical guided schedule:
- Camp 1 near the entrance to the King Trench, about 2,700 m, reached after a six-hour haul.
- Camp 2 in the King Trench, about 3,290 m (10,800 ft).
- Camp 3 on King Col, about 4,085 m (13,400 ft), between Logan and King Peak.
- The crux: the MacCarthy Gap, a slope of about 450 m (1,500 ft) up to 45°, steep but not technical.
- Camp 4 at about 4,660 m (15,300 ft).
- A carry over Prospector's Col at about 5,500 m (18,000 ft) and a camp on the summit plateau at about 5,150 m (16,900 ft).
- Summit day: a high-altitude walk of 5–6 km (3–4 miles) each way across the plateau, usually 10–15 hours.
Teams carry loads high and sleep low to acclimatise. Mountain Madness plans 25 days from Whitehorse and back, including spare days for flights. The first ascent party, by contrast, needed 65 days.
East Ridge. The second most popular line starts from the Hubbard Glacier and climbs a long, corniced ridge with steeper and more technical sections than the King Trench. It was first climbed in 1957 by Don Monk, Gil Roberts and three others after 24 days, and in 1959 Hans Gmoser's Canadian team climbed it alpine style in six days after skiing and walking about 160 km from Kluane Lake. Both teams finished on the East Peak (5,898 m); the main summit lies across the plateau to the west.
Harder routes. The mountain has been climbed by at least 13 routes. The most famous is the Hummingbird Ridge on the south side, climbed over 30 days in 1965 by Dick Long, Allen Steck and four others. Fred Beckey later admitted that nobody had thought they had a chance. In 2010 the Japanese climbers Katsutaka Yokoyama and Yasushi Okada climbed a new line on the south-east face, "I-TO", in alpine style in three days, and received a Piolet d'Or for it.
Permits, costs and rules
Kluane National Park and Reserve manages all climbing in the Icefield Ranges. As of 2026:
- Every person needs a Mountaineering Permit: 259 Canadian dollars per person (annual permit), plus an aircraft landing permit of 35.75 dollars per party for each landing.
- The expedition leader applies by email at least one month before the trip with an application and signed waiver, a map of the intended route and proof of insurance. Park staff do not review permits between 15 December and 5 March.
- Every member must carry rescue insurance covering at least 100,000 Canadian dollars of organised rescue or extraction from the icefields. Rescued climbers are billed directly.
- A minimum group of two is required for Logan. Since 2020 solo expeditions are not accepted, and travel in the icefields is not allowed between 15 November and 9 April.
- Teams must deregister in person, by phone or by email at the end of the trip; failing to do so starts a search that the party may have to pay for.
- Guides need a park business licence; the park provides a list of licensed companies.
- Everything is carried out, including fixed ropes, wands and rubbish; human waste goes into deep pits or crevasses. Drones are banned.
Guided trips are expensive: Mountain Madness charges from 10,900 US dollars per person for a 25-day expedition in 2026, including glacier flights, food and fuel on the mountain.
When to go and weather
Parks Canada gives the climbing season as mid-April to late June, and most guided teams fly in during May and come out in early June. Even then conditions are wintry. The park warns that storms with winds above 160 km/h and heavy snowfall are common and can last several days, pinning climbers in tents or snow caves, and that air temperatures during the season range from −40 °C to above freezing depending on altitude and weather.
On the plateau at around 5,000 m the temperature is about −45 °C in winter and only nears freezing in summer, with an annual median near −27 °C. A reading of −77.5 °C on 26 May 1991 is often cited as the coldest temperature recorded outside Antarctica, though it is not counted as an official record because of the altitude. Moist air from the Gulf of Alaska dumps 2–4 m of snow a year at 3,000–4,000 m on the western and southern slopes, while the plateau gets only about half a metre, carried mostly by wind. A University of Alberta team in 2021 never saw the temperature rise above −20 °C and lost days to 100 km/h winds.
Water
There is no running water anywhere on the route: every litre comes from melting snow on stoves. Fuel is therefore as important as food. Parks Canada advises drinking enough to prevent dehydration, which is easy to neglect in dry, cold air, and allowing extra food and fuel for days lost waiting for flights in or out. Collect clean snow away from toilet pits, and carry an insulated bottle or thermos on the long summit day.
Mobile coverage and communication
There is no mobile coverage in the Icefield Ranges. Parks Canada strongly recommends reliable communication with someone outside the mountains, to call for help and to arrange flights and weather updates. Satellite telephones are the preferred option and can be rented in Whitehorse; satellite messengers such as inReach or SPOT also work. In an emergency, be ready to give your coordinates and elevation, the nature of the problem, the weather and nearby hazards. The Parks Canada 24-hour emergency dispatch number is 1-780-852-3100; the general emergency number in Canada is 911.
Altitude, dangers and rescue
Logan accounts for the majority of incidents in Kluane National Park and Reserve. The hazards are crevasses, avalanches, seracs and corniced ridges, long storms and extreme cold, which make frostbite and hypothermia constant risks. The plateau means that climbers spend many days high, so acute mountain sickness, high-altitude pulmonary and cerebral oedema are real dangers; the park recommends slow acclimatisation, immediate descent for serious symptoms and carrying standard altitude medicines.
Parties must be able to rescue themselves and bring an injured member to a place where a plane can land. Parks Canada warns that help may take a long time because of bad weather, limited aircraft, the altitude and the time rescuers need to acclimatise, and that groups of four or more are better able to cope. In the seven years before 2020 the park carried out eight rescues, each costing 60,000–100,000 Canadian dollars, which led to the insurance rule. In 1987 David Cheesmond and Catherine Freer disappeared on the Hummingbird Ridge; their bodies were found in 2000 but could not be recovered.
History and name
Logan is hidden from the coast and surrounding lowlands by other ranges. The American geologist Israel C. Russell first reported it in 1890 during his expedition to Mount Saint Elias, describing a peak "rising in three white domes far above the clouds", and named it after Sir William Edmond Logan (1798–1875), the Montreal-born geologist who founded the Geological Survey of Canada in 1842. In 1894 its height was estimated at about 5,900 m, making it the highest known peak in North America until Denali was found to be higher in 1898.
The first ascent was organised by the Alpine Club of Canada after a suggestion by Professor A. P. Coleman in 1922. Led by Albert H. MacCarthy, the team approached from the mining town of McCarthy, Alaska. Supplies were taken in by horses and dog sleds in late winter 1925; the climbers set off in May, crossed the Chitina and Logan glaciers and established their final camp at about 5,460 m. On 23 June 1925 they first reached a lower summit, saw the true top beyond it, and at about 8 pm MacCarthy, H. F. Lambart, Allen Carpé, Norman H. Read, W. W. Foster and Andy Taylor stood on the summit. They spent a night in a snow hole on the descent and returned with severe frostbite after 65 days. The second ascent came only in 1950, when Norman Read, then 60, returned with André Roch.
Surveys long disagreed on the height: the boundary survey of 1913 gave 6,050 m, later ones less. In 1992 the Royal Canadian Geographical Society's "Logan '92" expedition, with the Geological Survey of Canada, the Canadian Geodetic Survey and Parks Canada, carried a GPS receiver to the summit. The team, led by Michael Schmidt of the Geological Survey, fixed the height at 5,959 m and left survey markers to measure future uplift.
After Pierre Trudeau died in 2000, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien announced that the mountain would be renamed Mount Trudeau. Yukoners, mountaineers, geologists and Trudeau's political opponents objected to removing the name of the man who made the first geological maps of Canada, and within weeks, on the eve of an election campaign, the government backed down. In 2006 a peak in the Premier Range of British Columbia was named Mount Pierre Elliott Trudeau instead.
Interesting facts
- From the late 1960s until 1979 the Arctic Institute of North America ran a high-altitude physiology laboratory on the Logan plateau at about 5,300 m, where Charles Houston, a pioneer of mountain medicine, studied altitude sickness.
- The first winter ascent was made on 16 March 1986 by the King Trench; the first ski descent, in 1967.
- X-Men writer Chris Claremont took Wolverine's real name, Logan, from the mountain: "the tallest mountain being the name of the shortest character".
- The neighbouring King Peak (5,173 m) was first climbed in 1952 by students of the University of Alaska; the same summer an American team made the first ascent of Mount Augusta and the second of King Peak. McArthur Peak also rises nearby.
FAQ
How high is Mount Logan? 5,959 m (19,551 ft), as measured by GPS on the summit in 1992. It is the highest point in Canada and the second-highest in North America after Denali.
How long does it take to climb Mount Logan? About three weeks on the mountain by the King Trench; guided expeditions plan around 25 days from Whitehorse and back, including spare days for flights and weather.
How difficult is Mount Logan? The King Trench is technically moderate (glacier travel, slopes up to 45°) but very serious: remote, extremely cold, stormy and high, with long days hauling sleds. Climbers need crevasse rescue, winter camping and altitude experience.
How much does it cost to climb Mount Logan? Park fees in 2026 are 259 Canadian dollars per person for the Mountaineering Permit and 35.75 dollars per party per landing. Rescue insurance of at least 100,000 Canadian dollars is required. A guided expedition costs from about 10,900 US dollars.
Is there water on Mount Logan? No liquid water: all water comes from melting snow, so carry plenty of fuel and extra for weather delays.
Is there mobile coverage on Mount Logan? No. Parks Canada recommends a satellite phone, which can be rented in Whitehorse, or a satellite messenger. Parks Canada's 24-hour emergency dispatch is 1-780-852-3100.
When is the best time to climb Mount Logan? May and early June, within the park's season from mid-April to late June. Travel in the icefields is not permitted from 15 November to 9 April.