PEAK-A-TWO
In July 1926, Don and Phyllis Munday failed to summit the mountain they discovered, but two years later climbed it. Mountaineers will set out in July to replicate their feat — using period gear
In June of 1925, B.C. mountaineering legends Don and Phyllis Munday made an ascent of Mount Arrowsmith on Vancouver Island with their friend Thomas Ingram.
On the way down they took a break to take in the view.
“The Coast Range towered in a violet wall out of Georgia Strait,” wrote Don Munday, who was also a journalist. “Shining upper levels merged with bright clouds piled mountainously along nearly 200 miles of the range.”
Then Phyllis spotted a peak that towered above the others.
“Phyl’s eyes shone as she handed me the binoculars and pointed to a tall mountain nearly due north through a new cloud-rift,” Don wrote.
“The compass showed the alluring peak stood along a line passing a little east of the head of Bute Inlet and perhaps 150 miles away, where blank spaces on the map left ample room for nameless mountains.”
The Mundays dubbed the unknown peak Mystery Mountain, and decided to climb it.
“It was the far-off finger of destiny beckoning,” Munday wrote.
The couple had discovered Mount Waddington, the highest peak solely in British Columbia. In July 1926 they were rebuffed in their first attempt to reach the summit of the 13,186-foot (4,019metre) mountain, but two years later conquered its northwest peak.
Inspired by their story, a group of amateur mountaineers will be setting out next month to replicate the Mundays’ climb — in period gear.
“We are going to be using only gear, equipment and clothing they would have used, and only eating food they would have eaten,” said expedition leader Bryan Thompson.
“So hobnail boots on our feet, wool clothes, canvas raincoats coated with oil and wax. No helmets, no harnesses, hemp rope, everything exactly as what they would have done.
“The Mundays made their own tents, their own pack frames, their own sleeping bags, so we’ve done all that as well, using the same materials that they would have used.”
The six climbers in Thomp- son’s group will also be retracing the Mundays’ route to the mountain up the Homathko river valley, which “is no walk in the park.”
“We’re leaving from Quadra Island on July 5, and travelling by an old schooner called the Misty Isles,” said Thompson.
“(It’s) taking us up Bute Inlet for a nine-hour voyage, (then) dropping us off at the head of Bute Inlet at the Homathko river estuary. Following the Homathko river valley for 10 days is going to be the biggest challenge, because we have some dangerous rivers to cross where we’ll have to cut down trees with an axe — I’m talking 100 foot, 150 foot trees — to throw over the river to cross.
“And then we’ve got quicksand to deal with, and we’ve got Devil’s club, which is this horrible brush that tears the flesh off you because it’s thorny. And we’ll pretty much be running into a grizzly bear every day.”
It sounds like the makings of a great documentary, and in fact filmmakers Greg Gransden and Kirk Rasmussen will be filming one. Gransden also did the doc Hobnails and Hemp Rope, which focused on Thompson’s recreation of a 1916 climb of Bugaboo Spire near Radium Hot Springs by another Canadian mountaineering legend, Conrad Kain.
The 49-year-old Thompson has been climbing for just over a decade. In his other life, he’s a building superintendent in Toronto.
“I run a not-for-profit highrise building for the Salvation Army,” he explains over the long distance line. “We work with a lot of folks with mental illness, help them get to a better place in life.”
A history buff, “I love reading about the exploits of the mountaineers who went out exploring when the areas they were exploring weren’t even on a map.” A lot of this was happening in the 1920s and ’30s, when the Mundays were among Canada’s most prominent mountaineers.
“What’s amazing about Don and Phyl is that they formed this incredible climbing partnership,” said Thompson. “They’re probably the most famous climbing couple in history. Not just Canadian history, world history.”
Another thing that’s remarkable about Don Munday is that he continued to climb after suffering a terrible injury to his left arm during the First World War.
“A shell exploded near him and tore his arm to shreds,” said Thompson. “Basically he had shrapnel right through his whole left forearm.”
Don met Phyllis in 1918, and they married two years later, raising a daughter in a cabin on Grouse Mountain. For a couple of years, Don earned a living cutting a trail up Grouse, but eventually their mountaineering brought them such renown their climbs were sponsored by the Sun and Province newspapers. They were so famous, they have a mountain named after them, Mount Munday.
Don detailed the couple’s exploits in stories for the papers, and in 1948, wrote a book, The Unknown Mountain, about discovering and climbing Mount Waddington.
It’s now regarded as a classic of Canadian mountaineering — and Thompson will be bringing a copy of it when he climbs B.C.’s tallest mountain inJuly.