Jim Logan drifts into our offices, a turkey sandwich in hand, totally elated. "Did you see the Web? My route's up there!" he blurts. We sit and talk, and it slowly unravels that Steve House and Colin Haley's May 25 first ascent on the 8,000-foot Emperor Face of Canada's Mount Robson (12,989 feet; see climbing.com/
news/hotflashes/
robsonthenandnow for more) is a repeat. However, it's the only repeat of a committing, daunting alpine line — with an M8 crux pitch — that Logan climbed with the late Mugs Stump some 29 years ago. Here, high on the snowy limestone wall, Logan made the lead of a lifetime, scraping up a runout corner wielding a customized (bent) Chouinard bamboo axe in his left hand and a Forrest ice hammer in the other. He spent hours on the pitch, freeing it onsight.
Now Logan, a youthful 60, runs architecture firm in Boulder, but often plays hookie to climb in Eldorado and at the Boulder Rock Club. He ranks the Emperor Face as one of his three great climbs, along with the 1960s FFAs of the Diamond on Longs Peak and the punishing offwidth Crack of Fear (5.10) at Lumpy Ridge.

Jim Logan is a Boulder fixture, climbing at the cutting edge – on snow, ice, and rock – for more than 40 years. He has many firsts, including FFAs and a bold first ascent, with Mugs Stump, of a direct line up the Emperor Face of the ominous Mount Robson, in Canada. Still, the exact particulars of his obsessive trip up the wall (it took three visits to Canada to complete) were almost lost to the ages, guidebook lines not quite on route and the passage of years with no activity on that part of the wall conspiring to rewrite history. This spring, Steve House and Colin Haley climbed what they thought was an entirely new route on the face, only to find remnants of Logan and Stump’s passage near the exit. Climbing Magazine caught up with him for a quick chat.

Matt: How long have you been in Boulder, Jim?

Jim: I came to go to CU in 1965.

Matt: 1965?

Jim: Yeah.

Matt: And, you’ve been since then?

Jim: Yeah, I flunked out of CU pretty quickly cause I was climbing all the time, and I have been here ever since.

Matt: Did you go back and finish your degree?

Jim: Yeah, I went back in my 30s and got an undergraduate degree and then became an architect.

Matt: Oh, OK.

Jim: I made that transition from being a carpenter-climber to a viable citizen.