People & Culture

The core of the mountain with Alison Criscitiello

Episode 98

Searching for clues to a changing climate on a record-breaking expedition to the top of Canada’s tallest peak

  • Published Feb 18, 2025
  • Updated Mar 18
Alison Criscitiello with the peak of Mt. Logan behind her. (Photo courtesy Alison Criscitiello)
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Few people have been to the summit of Mt. Logan, and even fewer people have been to the summit and stayed there for more than 24 hours. But for the sake of science, RCGS Fellow and world-leading ice core scientist Alison Criscitiello and her team took 10 days to summit Canada’s highest peak, where they camped for 16 days.

Alison Criscitiello with an ice core from Nunavut’s Agassiz Ice Cap in 2016. (Photo courtesy Alison Criscitiello)
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In her documentary, For Winter, Criscitiello takes viewers on a gruelling journey to the top of Mt. Logan, where she and her team of six researchers extract the longest ice core ever drilled at a high altitude: 327 metres. The goal was originally to drill 250 metres, but the team was able to go deeper, successfully extracting an additional 77 metres of valuable data about our climate and environmental history. 

For Winter premiered at the Banff Film Festival this past fall and was produced by National Geographic. Along with being a National Geographic Explorer, Criscitiello is also the director of the Canadian Ice Core Lab at the University of Alberta and a leading high-altitude mountaineer who has led expeditions (many of them all female) up some of the world’s highest peaks. In this week’s episode, we get into her early days as a US Park Climbing Ranger in the Pacific Northwest and her journey into ice core science, which has taken her all over the Arctic, the Antarctic and many fascinating places in between. Enjoy!

Alison Criscitiello on a walk near her favourite place in Canada: Atlin, B.C. (Photo: Sarah Waters)
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Alison Criscitiello and her team en route to Mt. Logan (Photo courtesy Alison Criscitiello)
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