Mount Logan
May 13–25, 2015 
Mount Logan is a great white whale of a mountain that rises thousands of metres out of an enormous sea of snow and ice in the Yukon Territory of Canada. At 5,959m (19,551 ft) it's the highest peak in Canada, and the second-highest peak in North America (Denali, a.k.a. Mt. McKinley, is a few hundred feet higher). But the mountain is little-known, even amongst climbers. It can't be seen from any road, and its existence was unsuspected until the late 19th century, when surveyors began mapping the surrounding peaks in the St. Elias range. Even today few people have laid eyes on it, let alone set foot on it, and only a dozen or two climbers attempt it every year, unlike the thousand or so that regularly attempt Denali.

For me Mt. Logan was something of a Moby-Dick, but fortunately not one that had cost me any limbs. My first views of the mountain were on trips to the St. Elias range in 1997 and 2001, and I'd attempted its East Ridge on 2002. On that occasion we climbed to within a day's round trip of the summit, only to retreat after being pinned down by a four-day storm and exhausting our food and fuel supplies. This time we were determined to maximize our chance of success; we chose an easier route (the King Trench) and brought almost four weeks of supplies. It also helped that my skiing had improved in the meantime; the King Trench is an ideal route for ski-mountaineering.

As it turned out, the mountain was in a benign mood. We were lucky enough to have an unbroken stretch of near-perfect weather; there was no waiting to fly in or out, and we were able to get up and down in just 12 days. (This was my climbing partner Brian's first visit to the St. Elias, and he probably now thinks it's like that all the time). Other climbers that flew in a week before us weren't so lucky; they had to endure hurricane-force winds, and some of them had to abandon their attempt after their tent was shredded. Our biggest problems were having to deal with two weeks' worth of unused supplies at the end of the trip, and the extortionate cost of changing our airline tickets in order to fly home early.
Google Map of Mt. Logan:
 Video footage from our flight in:
Photos from our trip: