Capturing the Summit

As the highest point in Canada, Mount Logan in Yukon Territory has fascinated mountaineers for more than a century. In its story of the peak’s first ascent, Capturing the Summit takes a different tack from most, in that it follows the diaries of two men with very different roles on the 1925 Alpine Club of Canada expedition.

Hamilton Mack Laing was a naturalist and photographer whose job was to document flora and fauna. Since virtually nothing lives in the mountain’s icy upper reaches, Laing’s work was restricted to lower elevations. His diary is an often-meditative observation of the life around him.

Alone in his lower camp, he wakes up to the sound of songbirds, admires the local grizzlies, makes friends with a family of ravens, and collects showy alpine flowers. Laing also kills a lot of birds and other animals as part of his job of collecting specimens for the Victoria Memorial Museum in Ottawa.

Fred Lambart was deputy leader of the expedition to scale Mount Logan’s peak. While Lambart was optimistic on the outside, his journal sometimes grumbles with disagreement about the trip leader’s decisions. He walks down the mountain with frozen feet, using words like “attack,” “assault,” “capture,” and “conquer” to describe what the eight-member climbing team has done.

Author Trevor Mark Hughes goes back and forth between the two contrasting voices, sometimes inserting quotations from other expedition members. Once the reader gets accustomed to the rhythm, it becomes an engaging read. Nicely illustrated with photographs of the expedition, this book will interest mountain lovers and birdwatchers alike.