It was thought by many, for years, that Mount Robson (3954
metres) was the reigning monarch of all the jutting rock peaks of BC mountains.
But, in 1925, BC climbing legends, Don and Phyllis Munday, having climbed Mount
Arrowsmith (near Port Alberni), descended, binoculars in hand, gazed northward
across the Georgia Straight, and saw a white crowned peak that altered the
direction of their hiking lives. Don summed up the telling experience, in his
insightful and evocative way, when he said:
Phyl’s eyes shone as she handed me the binoculars and pointed to a tall mountain nearly due north
through a new cloud-rift. 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 many nameless mountains.
It was the far-off finger of destiny beckoning. It was a marker
along the trail of adventure, a torch to set the imagination on fire.
The peak that could be seen through the cloud-rift was the
rock spire and spear point of Mount Waddington (4016 metres). Such a sighting
did, indeed, set the climbing imagination of Don and Phyllis on fire. The fire
provided warmth and much light for many for decades. The quest was on to visit,
dine with and get to know the queen of the BC Coastal Range. The Mundays made
many attempts, beginning in the spring of 1926, to scale the arduous glaciers,
ice fields and plant a firm flag atop Mount Waddington, but they were denied
such an honour. Munday Peak in the Waddington Range was named after Don/Phyllis,
but the torch was passed onto others.
‘Mystery Mountain’, as Waddington was called by Don,
welcomed and drew many to her challenging embrace. The publication of Round Mystery Mountain: A Ski Adventure (1935),
by Sir Norman Watson and Edward King, emerged from the hard decade long
research done by the Mundays in the area. Round
Mystery Mountain is replete with historic photographs of the journey round
the feet and lower garments of Waddington. The tome is well worth the curious
read for literary and historic reasons, although those with a more technical
interest in the Waddington Range and the many glaciers in the area might crave
something more demanding. But, Round
Mystery Mountain: A Ski Adventure does hold the reader spellbound with well
crafted phrases and descriptions of the tough and rigorous nature of the
adventure round mountains others longed to do more than go around.
The fire lit when Don/Phyllis Munday first saw Waddington
continued long after Watson/King had finished their ski adventure round the
base of this queen of the glaciers and sentinels of old. The fire that was lit
upon first sighting Waddington in Don inspired not only many a literal hike and
climb in the area, but pen also took to parchment. Don Munday was a superb
wordsmith, and he could tell a tale well. And, in the 1940s Don wrote the tale,
in a most inviting way, of the many trips he/Phyllis and others took to the
Waddington area.
Don’s literary efforts were rewarded by the birth of The Unknown Mountain (1948). WW II was
now well over, and The Unknown Mountain
walks the interested and curious reader, chapter by chapter, into an important
phase of BC history and mountaineering. Those who are more than mere rock jocks
and given to mountain machoism cannot help but be held, entranced and intrigued
by the way Phil unfolds and unravels the many trips to Waddington in The Unknown Mountain. Fine photos
abound, and the descriptive text draws the reader into the actual experience of
being in the area. The 27 chapters in this well wrought literary urn are not to
be missed. And, to think this was a form of mountaineering before much of the
modern garb and gear we have these days. Weights carried were immense, tents
were not as light as today and climbing equipment much less sophisticated. But,
Don/Phyllis and others sought to know this unknown mountain, this queen of the
Coastal Range, and they went back year after year to draw ever closer and know
ever better the delights and joys of Waddington, the unknown and mystery
mountain.
Don Munday died in 1950, and most of his voluminous writings
are still in the archives, awaiting someone to draw them forth and publish
them. The Unknown Mountain can still
be purchased, but the bulk of Don’s missives and novels, essays and prose
patiently linger, eager for someone to publish them, to walk them into the
public reading environment.
Phyllis Munday continued her passion for the mountains after
Don died, but trips to Waddington waned as age thinned out energy and aches and
pains demanded their due. A new generation, in the 1950s-1960s, turned to
Waddington to test their skills against the queen of the Coastal Range.
The publication of Aware
of the Mountain: Mountaineering as Yoga, by Gil Parker (VP of the Alpine
Club of Canada from 1976-1980), tells some interesting tales of Waddington.
Parker has a great admiration for Roger Neave, and Neave attempted to climb
Waddington in 1934. He never made it to the summit, but his ascent paved the
way for Fritz Weissner and Bill House who scaled the rock turret in 1936. Aware of the Mountain is a finely
written missive, and within its many compact and evocative pages, Parker
recounts a climb with Roger Neave up Mount Noel in 1977 when Neave was
71 years of age (pgs. 99-107). Aware of the Mountain also includes Parker’s time spent at
Waddington and the Plummer Hut (pgs. 90-99).
The publication of The
Mountaineers: Famous Climbers in Canada (1979) was significant for three
reasons. First, the book by Phil Dowling was published through Hurtig
Publishers, hence the important Canadian nationalist. Mel Hurtig. Second,
Dowling does a fine job, chapter by chapter, of highlighting the lives and main
ascents of significant climbers in Canada,
BC and the Coastal Range: Charles Fay, Val Fynn, Albert
MacCarthy, Conrad Kain, Ed Feuz, Phyl Munday, Fred Becky, Hans Gmoser, Brain
Greenwood and Dick Culbert. The Waddington Range is important for such a
climber as Dick Culbert. The
Mountaineers: Famous Climbers in Canada did much to reveal a vivid
mountaineering history in Canada, and, rightly so, it concluded with the
climbing exploits of Dick Culbert.
Both The Canadian
Mountaineering Anthology (1994) and Pushing
the Limits: The Story of Canadian Mountaineering (2000) build on the
pioneering work of The Mountaineers
yet deepen and broaden the work and research of Phil Dowling. The Canadian Mountaineering Anthology suggests,
and legitimately so, that 1960-1975 in the BC Coastal Range should be called
‘The Culbert Era in the Coast Mountains’. Bruce Fairley is spot on when he
says, ‘Dick Culbert was, for the 15 years between 1960 and 1975, the most
famous and prolific climber in the Coast Mountains’ (p.273).
Chic Scott, in Pushing
the Limits, very much agreed with the assessment of
Fairley about the role of Culbert in building on yet going
beyond the heroic work of Don/Phyllis Munday and their work in the Coastal
Range and Mount Waddington (pgs. 237-241). Culbert’s two missives on BC
mountaineering, A Climber’s Guide to the
Coastal Ranges of British Columbia (1965) and Alpine Guide to South Western British Columbia (1974), are now
classics and part of the rich lore of the West Coast. Both books were essential
building blocks and foundations stones for the fuller yet somewhat dated, Climbing & Hiking in Southwestern
British Columbia (1986 & 1999), by Bruce Fairley.
It is most interesting to note that Dick Culbert dedicated A Climber’s Guide to the Coastal Ranges of
British Columbia to ‘the land of beyond’—its explores, its dreamers, and
its victims. ‘The Land of Beyond’ is a poem by the well known Canadian people’s
poet, Robert Service. Service was, in many ways, a poet and prose writer of the
peaks, and he wrote with much artistic beauty and descriptive insight of the
Gold Rush days, and the arduous and death dealing trip by many over the
Chilkoot Pass. This brief description from Service’s The Trail of Ninety-Eight: A Northland Romance (1910) tells it all.
‘Like a stream of black ants they were, between mountains that veered up
swiftly to storm smitten palisades of ice’. Such a line, and there are many
like them, could not but hold and charm Dick Culbert. This is why, in the
1960s, he wrote many a verse in the ballad like style of Service, and why A Climber’s Guide to the Coastal Ranges of
British Columbia, drew its inspiration from a title of a poem by Robert
Service.
The climbing life of Dick Culbert connects well with both
Glenn Woodsworth and Arnold Shives. Dick, Arnold, Glenn and Ashlyn Armour Brown
were in the Howson and Seven Sisters Range in 1962, funded by the BC government
with a grub stake grant. But, it was in 1964 that Arnold Shives took to the SW
Range of Waddington in the Franklin and Confederation glacier area, while Glenn
Woodsworth and Dick Culbert took to higher peaks and did more ascents in more
challenging areas of Waddington. Glenn (grandson of J.S. Woodsworth—founder of
the CCF party in Canada) wrote the first climbing book to the Chief in Sqaumish
in 1967, and Glenn’s recent book, Hot
Springs in Western Canada: A Complete Guide (1999), remains the best book
to date on hot springs in Western Canada, Washington and Alaska. There is
little doubt that Arnold Shives is one of the finest and most nuanced mountain
painters in British Columbia.
His work has been highlighted and showcased in many
magazines and art galleries. Trevor Carolan’s article,‘The Wilderness
Sacraments of Arnold Shives’ (Image: Summer:
2001), walked the extra mile to make it abundantly clear the sheer vigour and
depth of Arnold’s artistic contribution to West Coast mountain painting. Arnold
was kind enough to do some superb lookout sketches for my recent book, Thomas Merton and the Beats of the North Cascades
(2005). The Waddington Range has done much to welcome and inspire painters and
poets, climbers and cloud walkers of the finest and best. Dick Culbert, Glenn
Woodsworth and Arnold Shives, without a doubt, have paid much homage and
rightful due to the Queen of the Coastal Mountain range.
Chic Scott, to his credit, goes much further and does a
better job on unpacking the many ascents of Waddington in his chapter, ‘Coast
Mountains’ (pgs. 226-254) than does Fairley. The graphic and eye gripping
images in Pushing the Limits: The Story
of Mountaineering in Canada up the ante to a much higher degree and quality
about reporting on Canadian and BC mountaineering. Scott has rendered more than
exquisite yeoman’s service to the tale and drama of mountaineering in Canada,
the BC Coastal Range and Mount Waddington. The passion and mountain commitments
of Don/Phyllis Munday, Dick Culbert, Glenn Woodsworth and Arnold Shives are
raised to new heights, and the queen of the Coastal Range could not help but be
more than pleased with the services offered and effort rendered at the royal
court fully decked in the purest of white.
It would be impossible to hike much further in this journey
without mentioning another hiking/climbing couple that has done much to point
the way to the Queen of the Coastal Mountains. Martin and Esther Kafer became
key people in the BCMC, and in 1969, they played the lead role in building the
Plummer Hut near Mount Waddington (THE BC MOUNTAINEER: 2004, pgs. 120-124).
‘The Plummer Hut, 1969 to ? (I hope a Long Time’, by Martin Kafer, tells in
exquisite and not to be forgotten detail the reasons for the building of
Plummer Hut and the building of it at the base of Claw Peak. The front door of
Plummer Hut gazes into the long glaciated face of Mount Waddington. In many
ways, Martin/Esther Kafer became the Don/Phyllis Munday of the 1960s-1970s in
the Coastal Mountains and beyond, and they should be recognized for such a full
and hearty contribution to both the building of the Plummer Hut and the support
they gave to so many in the BCMC and beyond.
It might be valuable to backtrack for a few fleeting
moments. The fact that Don Munday’s, The
Unknown Mountain, was so well written did not go unnoticed. There was many
a call for a reprint and new edition. But, such a reprint had to also deal with
the extraordinary lives of Don/Phyllis Munday.
Hence, in a recent republication of The Unknown Mountain(1993) , Angus
M. Gunn, has written an admirable and generous introduction to the book and the
life of Don/Phyllis Munday. ‘Behind the Unknown Mountain’, by Gunn, hikes the
reader into the fascinating life of the Munday family and their life in the BC
mountains. Gunn’s timely introduction to the legendary Munday family should be
read alongside the recent biography of Phyllis
Munday. Phyllis
Munday: Mountaineer (2002), by Kathryn Bridge, although wanting in some
context and depth, does offer a fine primer into the creative and energetic
mountain lore of, mostly, Phyllis Munday. There was a desperate need for such a
introduction to the climbing life of Phyllis Munday, and Kathryn Bridge should
be offered many a kudo for her primer.
Much more work needs to be done on the life and times of
Don/Phyllis Munday, the BC Coastal Range and Mount Waddington, but it is
impossible to understand the appeal and drama of the Queen of the Coastal Range
without significant attention being paid to the Munday family and Dick Culbert.
The cover of the Canadian
Alpine Journal (2002) has a splendid picture of Bruce Kirkby in the Mount
Waddington area (peaks and snow aplenty in the background), and the Journal is not shy about including in
the 2002 edition an article on Mount Waddington.
The most recent and without doubt the most important book on
the Waddington Range is by Don Serl. Serl contributed a significant chapter to
The Canadian Mountain
Anthology (‘The Traverse’), and he was featured in
Pushing the Limits
(pgs. 254-259). Serl has, as a climbing prince of Waddington, been to the
stately Queen often, and he has lived to write about his many climbs. The Waddington Guide: Alpine Climbs in one
of the World’s Great Ranges (2003) stands in a class of its own. The book
is written well, the photos speak volumes and the routes listed, mentioned,
tracked and traced, tell us many things about the various routes and paths to
the Queen of the Coastal Range. There is no doubt that Don Serl’s The Waddington Guide is a keeper that
will last for many a decade. Serl has paid his dues, and he writes about what
he has said, seen and done (while listening closely to what others have done,
seen and said) in an articulate and readable manner.
Those who dream and hope of taking to and seeing the Queen
of the Coastal Range (and the Great Ranges round Waddington) should sit, chew
on, inwardly digest and thoroughly absorb Serl’s The Waddington Guide: Alpine Climbs in one of the World’s Great Ranges.
The book is a comprehensive guide to not only Waddington but the beauty and
fullness of the best of the Canadian Coastal Range.
We have come quite a distance from 1925 when Don/Phyllis
Munday saw
Mount Waddington from Mount Arrowsmith on Vancouver Island.
The imagination of many has been set on fire. The Queen welcomed Don/Phyllis,
but she never allowed them too close to her mystery. Fred Becky and Dick
Culbert drew much closer to the unknown mountain and the mystery, and they
lived to write many a fine book about the Queen of the Great Ranges. Don Serl
has taken the challenge to a greater and fuller level, and The Waddington Guide is the book of books, the Bible of both the
way to Waddington and the royal court that surrounds this Queen in the Great
Ranges of BC. Do purchase, read and take the trip to the Alps of BC.