Mount Logan - Yukon Territory (Highest Peak in Canada)

[1-Mount Logan]

Mount Logan is Canada’s highest mountain at 5,959 metres (19,551 ft) and the second highest peak in North America, after Mount McKinley.

The mountain was named after Sir William Edmond Logan. His abilities as a geologist were noticed, and in 1842 he was asked to establish the Geological Survey of Canada where he was the first director from 1842 to 1869. In 1855, he recruited Robert Barlow as the survey's chief draughtsman. During this time he described the Laurentian rocks of the Laurentian mountains in Canada and of the Adirondacks in the state of New York. Over his illustrious career he received 22 medals including the Legion of Honor from Emperor Napoleon III of France in 1855 and a knighthood from Queen Victoria in 1856. In the same year he was awarded the Wollaston Medal by the Geological Society of London.

Mount Logan is located within Kluane National Park and Reserve in southwestern Yukon and is the source of the Hubbard and Logan Glaciers. Logan reportedly has the largest base circumference of any mountain on Earth. Due to active tectonic uplifting, Mount Logan is actually still rising in elevation.

[2-Hubbard Glacier Map]

Hubbard Glacier is a tidewater glacier located in the U.S. state of Alaska and the Yukon Territory of Canada. From its source in the Yukon, the glacier stretches 122 km (76 mi) to the sea at Yakutat Bay and Disenchantment Bay. It is the longest tidewater glacier in Alaska, with an open calving face over ten kilometers (6 mi) wide.

Hubbard Glacier’s longest source, 122 km from its snout, is at about 11,000 feet above sea level, about eight kilometers west of Mt. Walsh. A shorter tributary glacier begins at the easternmost summit on the Mt. Logan ridge at about 18,300 feet.

Of late the majority of glaciers around the world are melting at alarming rates. However, the Hubbard Glacier which is joined by the Valerie Glacier to the west, and through forward surges of its own ice, has contributed to the advance of the ice flow that experts believe will eventually dam the Russell Fiord from Disenchantment Bay waters.

[3-Hubbard Glacier and Valerie Glacier joining]


The Hubbard Glacier ice has continued to advance 5.5 metres per year for about a century. The ice at the foot of Hubbard Glacier is about 400 years old: it takes that long for ice to traverse the length of the glacier. The glacier routinely calves off icebergs the size of a ten-story building. Where the glacier meets the shore, most of the ice is below the waterline, and newly calved icebergs can shoot up quite dramatically, so that ships must keep their distance from it as they ply their way up and down the coast.

Research: Wikipedia
Photo Credits: Wikipedia