Calgary climber retracing route to mystery peak
Team sets out with 1926 equipment in Mystery Mountain Project climb in B.C.
It was 1926 when Don and Phyllis Munday set off in search of the highest peak in B.C. that experts said didn’t exist.
The couple proved them all wrong when they returned from the wilderness five weeks later with proof that Mystery Mountain wasn’t a mystery after all.
Now, more than 90 years later, a team of six adventurers with the Mystery Mountain Project are bushwhacking the same trails and carrying the same style of 1900sera climbing equipment the Mundays used on their trek.
The group started their hike on Thursday and will spend the next five weeks in the backcountry on their way to Mystery Mountain, better known as Mount Waddington.
One of the project’s adventurers is Paddy McGuire, a 57-year-old Calgarian who climbed his first mountain at the age of 11.
He’s been on expeditions to Alaska, the Yukon and Nepal. But he says the Mystery Mountain Project is a new challenge for even an experienced climber because of the antique equipment the team is using on the trip.
“Pretty much everything is double in weight and there’s no such thing as Gortex, so we’re going to be possibly very wet,” he said. “Our sleeping bags are 10 pounds versus a three-pound modern one, and we’ve made a lot of the equipment ourselves.”
A blacksmith hand-crafted the crampons and ice-climbing tools the team will need to scale Mount Waddington. McGuire said the only 21st-century gear they are taking is a satellite radio and cans of bear spray, because “the chances of seeing grizzlies is very real.”
The Mystery Mountain Project is sponsored by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society as a tribute to the Mundays’ discovery in 1926. It would be another 10 years before anyone set foot on the summit of Mount Waddington, the highest peak in B.C. at 4,019 metres.
McGuire said a second group will helicopter in at the base of the mountain 10 days into the trek as a support team ahead of the climb. The six climbers will also be joined by filmmakers Greg Gransden and Kirk Rasmussen, who are recording the expedition for a documentary.
McGuire said the trek is a chance for the team to get back to nature, forget their “first-world problems” and experience a once-in-a-lifetime adventure.
He said the team’s mountaineering skills will be put to the test using the old-time gear in a challenging environment.
“It’s going to be trial by error, really,” he said. “It’s going to be like going into the deepest, darkest jungle anywhere — the bush out here on the west coast is as challenging as anywhere in the world.”
The team will emerge from the B.C. backcountry in the first week of August. For more information on the Mystery Mountain Project, visit www.canadianehsociety.ca and www.rcgs.org.
Our sleeping bags are 10 pounds versus a three-pound modern one, and we’ve made a lot of the equipment ourselves.