Tom Kitta has a long list of mountains he’s summited solo all over the world, and on June 3 he added one more, conquering Mount Logan, the highest peak in Canada at 5,959 metres. Kitta started the journey with an American climber he’d just met for this adventure. Then, at the final camp below the summit, Kitta’s partner became dizzy and nauseous and didn’t continue. But the conditions were right for Kitta. “I looked outside around 6 p.m., and the weather was continuing to improve,” he said. “The summit was visible; the big clouds over the summit actually dissipated. It was looking like a really nice day, and I knew the general direction was to just go straight and turn right.” Kitta says the sun was warm at the start of his final push, but as the sun set, it became colder and windier. “I was really cold and had to put my down pants on, and it was so cold that my hands were freezing after about less than a minute, so I had to keep warming my hands. It probably took like, 45 minutes to change my clothing with the extra layer, and this was the most clothing I wore in my whole entire life, so it was maybe even colder than -30; I have no idea, maybe -40,” he said. Kitta is no stranger to solo climbing and says being cold on a mountain with little oxygen can play tricks on your mind. “I did almost everything solo, so I kind of have experiences of the psychological problems that happen when you just don’t see another human being for a while and you’re just by yourself,” he said. “There’s this little thing in your head like, ‘Why are you here? You should go back. Why are you doing this?’” Kitta says he tried to hurry to the summit close to midnight to get a picture of the sun setting but missed it by a few minutes. His photos, however, show a long-lasting sunset because at that altitude the sun only drops below the horizon, and it stays relatively light out through the night. “It felt great that I did it, and my thoughts actually—contrary to most people’s thinking—were, ‘I need to get out of here.’ You know? ‘I need to take the proof quickly that I was here and get out alive,’” he said. “I save the feelings of accomplishment for when I am safely in a tent and it’s done.” Kitta isn’t sure which mountain he’ll climb next, but he knows there will be another summit in his life around the end of the year.
