Mount Logan is a mountain on the Gaspé Peninsula, in Quebec, Canada. Part of the Chic-Choc Mountains, Mount Logan rises above sea level, making it the highest point in the Bas-Saint-Laurent region and one of the few Quebec peaks over .
The mountain's unusually steep northern flank is visible from Cap-Chat, on the estuary of Saint Lawrence. The altitude and the summit's exposure to winds from the Gulf of St. Lawrence make it one of Quebec's most precipitated summits. The combination of the mountain's physiography and unusual climate make it the habitat of several rare animal and plant species, such as caribou and griscom arnica.
Mount Logan's topography, ancient geological composition, and remarkable flora and fauna aroused the scientific community's interest in the mid-19th century.
Despite conditions favorable for skiing, Mount Logan's remoteness has worked against efforts to develop recreational and tourist enterprises. Straddling the boundaries of Gaspésie National Park, the Réserve faunique de Matane (Matane Animal Reserve), and the Fernald Ecological Reserve, its protected status severely limits industrial activities such as forestry or broadcasting.
Toponymy
Mount Logan is named after William Edmond Logan. Although already in use for some time, the name was formalized in 1898 by the Geographical Survey of Canada. The highest point in Canada, Mount Logan in Yukon, is also named in his honor.
Geography
Location
Mount Logan is in the unorganized area of Rivière-Bonjour, on the Gaspé Peninsula's northern flank in the province of Quebec in eastern Canada. It is east of Matane, the capital of the La Matanie Regional County Municipality, and northeast of Quebec City, the provincial capital. The summit rises to about in the Chic-Choc Mountains of the chain of the Notre Dame Mountains.
Topography
The Mount Logan massif contains three physiographic divisions. The north features highlands, the center is a mountain ridge of the Chic-Chocs and the south is a plain.
The piedmont highlands are made up of wooded valleys with an average altitude of . Streams and rivers flow through ravines up to .
Mount Logan's terrain is variegated, with gentle rounded and grassy slopes alongside steep cliffs. To the north, a steep escarpment makes it one of eastern Canada's highest peaks, with a height at the peak of . This wall, whose height varies between , has a slope generally between 20 and 40 degrees and is even vertical in certain places. The wall is visible from several places along the coast of the Saint Lawrence, in particular Cap-Chat and Sainte-Anne-des-Monts. The wall's western portion, although not as steep, is nonetheless as impassable. The slopes of the southern flank of the massif are gentle; its elevation varies from , with a sloping distance of about one kilometer.
The summit itself is a picturesque dome with an elevation of up to , set on a ridge of similarly elevated peaks (Mattawees, Fortin, Pembroke) interspersed with deep valleys.
Geology
Mount Logan was formed about 450 million years ago, during the Lower Ordovician, Paleozoic era During the Taconic orogeny, a mountain-building period that affected most of modern-day New England, the lateral pressure exerted by other formations in the bedrock created folds and a bed load a few hundred meters thick. The north overlap fault of Lake Cascapedia marks the front of one of these folds. The southern edge is made up of a strike-slip fault zone known as the "South Schikshock" or the "Brompton – Baie-Verte line". This line separates the Taconian belt from the Acadian belt. The Logan nappe consists of metabasalt and metasedimentary rocks., which are harder than the rocks of the surrounding formations, which in turn erode faster, revealing the unusual relief of the Chic-Choc mountains, and more specifically of Mont Logan.
Soundings revealed intrusions of the Devonian in the form of sill and dyke. This research also revealed a substantial presence of copper, talc and marl on the mountain.
Climate
There is no station providing continuous climate data at the top of Mount Logan; a climate model is used to estimate temperatures and precipitation from data from surrounding stations.