03 - High on Logan
Most Yukoners can appreciate their really big mountain—from a distance.
A proud Yukoner could rhyme off a long list of features that make the Yukon spectacular. Some of the most impressive natural features, like the aurora borealis, aren’t exactly unique to the territory, so one big-time example inevitably pops up when serious bragging rights are on the line: Canada’s highest mountain.
At 5,959 meters—that’s just shy of 20,000 feet—Mount Logan soars head and shoulders above any peak in the country, save for a few of its towering companions locked away in the Icefield Range of Yukon’s Kluane National Park. As if this lofty distinction isn’t enough, a really proud Yukoner would add that the mountain is surrounded by the largest non-polar icefields on earth.
The intriguing thing about our attachment to Mount Logan is that, for most of us, it’s not an attachment to the mountain as much as an attachment to the statistic. You’ll never want for a local who can talk your ear off about a first-hand experience at the Dawson City Music Festival, but you won’t encounter too many for whom Mount Logan is anything more than a remote idea. The truth is, the majority of us are unlikely to even lay eyes on this massive landmark, let alone get up close and personal.
Of course, there are a few Yukoners—myself not included—who aren’t deterred by the high costs, complex logistics or obvious risks posed by an attempt to penetrate Logan’s frozen domain. No, they have loftier ambitions and the determination to act upon them. Every May and June, when the weather is most cooperative, they join fellow adventurers from around the world to attempt a feat that was accomplished for the first time in 1925.
Yes, they try to climb the behemoth.
“It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen in the Yukon,” observes a Whitehorse friend who participated in an expedition in 2000. “You’re traveling on a glacier and it’s enormous. It’s so big, it feels like its own environment. Sometimes, it didn’t really feel like we were traveling through the mountains. It felt like we were traveling through the desert.”
After 16 days of skiing up Logan’s easiest ascent route, his group turned back just 300 vertical meters—and around 10 horizontal kilometers—from the summit. Altitude sickness was the culprit.
“I wasn’t all that disappointed at the time,” he recalls. “There’s a lot of relief just getting out of an experience like that—and getting out safely. For me, it was an experience and it didn’t matter whether we got to the top.”
Fortunately, another Yukon friend shares this philosophical outlook. It may serve him well, since he should be somewhere on Logan in May of this year.
“The summit success is about 30 percent,” he tells me a few months before his expedition. “I mean, 70 percent of people, if the summit is their only goal, are going to come back bummed and bitter. You have to go in incredibly humble. I’m not going in with a failure attitude, but I’m very uncertain as to our chances. There are too many variables that are out of our control.”
He adds that “tons of Yukoners” will reportedly be on Mount Logan at the same time as he and his climbing partner.
This remark, to my mind, defines the Theory of Yukon Relativity, whereby “tons” may more accurately describe “a few.” In reality, most of us won’t be anywhere near Mount Logan this spring or anytime soon. But that doesn’t mean we won’t be there in spirit, cheering a hardier breed of Yukoner to the top of our favourite statistic.
In this sense, the whole Yukon may be a little high on Logan. But some of its citizens are literally a lot higher than most.
First published in the May/June 2007 issue of above&beyond magazine. Photo by Jean-Paul Molgat.
