Voices
Solving the Puzzle of Mystery Mountain
Video Transcript
Background Description: At the top of the screen is the title, “Solving the Puzzle of Mystery Mountain.” A black and white photograph shows a snowy, mountainous landscape with evergreen trees. In the background can be seen The Lions, two distinct peaks on a mountain. In the foreground two hikers stand looking up to the peaks.
Narrator speaks: During the early 1930s, two club members gained notoriety within the mountaineering community. They clearly demonstrated an intense and complete dedication to their mountain way of life and to each other.
Background Description: A black and white photograph shows a group of five hikers, three men and two women, standing in a line in the snow on a mountainside, a forest of evergreen trees behind them. Don and Phyllis Munday are to the left.
Narrator speaks: Phyllis and Don Munday can hardly be denied a rightful place as the best known couple in the history of Coast Mountain exploration.
Background Description: Our view is taken slowly up a black and white photograph of two climbers making their way up the side of a steep rock face. Don, leading, carries a heavy pack and climbing rope.
Narrator speaks: Don had joined the BCMC in 1910. Frontline experience in World War One left him with a nagging arm injury.
Background Description: A black and white photograph shows Don on the porch of his mountain cabin doing some construction. Our view is taken up a black and white photograph with four climbers making their way up a steep slope of snow and ice in single file. Phyllis is second from the top.
Narrator speaks: Disenchanted by the realities of men and war, he swore off the material and violent ways of mankind, and sought out spiritual rejuvenation and refuge among the mountains.
Background Description: A black and white snapshot shows Phyllis, a young woman wearing hiking clothes and snowshoes, standing on a snow-covered mountainside with her hands in her pockets. Her head is turned to look straight at us.
Narrator speaks: Shortly after emigrating with her family from Ceylon to Canada, Phyllis James spent several years in the mountains of the West Kootenays before moving to Vancouver.
Background Description: A black and white photo shows Don as a young man, looking on. It is a snowy day. We follow his gaze gradually down a hillside to see four other climbers only to find he is looking at Phyllis, the last of these climbers. She looks toward us seemingly unaware of his gaze.
Narrator speaks: Don Munday met Phyllis James in 1918.
Background Description: Old black and white film and some colour footage show views of Don and Phyllis carrying backpacks, and skis on their shoulders. They are also using ice axes as walking sticks, making their way through mountainous terrain.
Phyllis Munday speaks: Then finally, I met Don and he was a climber. I belonged to the BC Mountaineering Club at that time. We met quite often, of course, on their trips. Well, I was always keen on the out-of-doors, and you were never seen on the street with britches in those days. So we’d wear a skirt over our britches and then when we got to the foot of the mountain or the foot of the trail, wherever you happened to be, you took your skirt off.
Narrator speaks: Together, they sought deeper meaning and a peaceful existence within the mountain world.
Background Description: A black and white photograph shows a small cabin in the woods with snow all around. Phyllis is standing on the porch. Glimpsed inside the cabin is kitchenware stacked on shelves by a window.
Narrator speaks: They would not abide a life in the city. The soul-mates soon married and spent their honeymoon at a new cabin Don had constructed on the flanks of Dam Mountain.
Background Description: A black and white photograph shows Phyl with a full pack on her back, an ice axe in her hand poked in the snow-covered ground, and a small child bundled up in a snowsuit stands beside her.
Narrator speaks: In 1921, the unit of two turned into three with the birth of their daughter, Edith.
Background Description: A black and white photograph shows toddler Edith, in a dress and bonnet, sitting above a backpack on her father’s shoulders.
Narrator speaks: A new dependant raised the usual concerns about livelihood.
Background Description: A black and white photograph shows the family sitting together on the ground outside the cabin. Edith looks around five years old.
Narrator speaks: Always creative, Don and Phyl exercised substantial entrepreneurial skill.
Background Description: A black and white photograph gives us a view looking down at three men near a tent and the trees they have cut. Then we are shown a newspaper advertisement that says, “Alpine Lodge, Grouse Mountain Plateau. Meals, refreshments, etcetera, at all hours. Special prices to members of BCMC and ACC. Under the management of Mr. And Mrs. Don Munday. Phone N. Van. 200. Permanent quarters now under construction on plateau.”
Narrator speaks: They were hired to carve a horse trail from the Lynn Tram Terminal and build a cabin on Grouse Plateau where they served tea, baked goods and hot soup to travelers on the Grouse Mountain trail.
Background Description: A photograph shows Phyllis and daughter, Edith outside their cabin. A blackboard menu is posted on the wall. Then we see a photo of Don standing on the porch of the cabin which features an inviting staircase to the porch with bent curved wood for a banister.
Narrator speaks: Besides mountaineering, writing was a great passion of Don’s. He submitted articles about club outings to Vancouver newspapers.
Background Description: Our view pans across the top of a newspaper to see in large letters, “The BC Mountaineer,” with a sketch of mountain terrain behind this masthead. Lower on the page we see next a scene of Vancouver and Burrard Inlet photographed from snow-covered Grouse Mountain.
Narrator speaks: In 1923 Don began a commitment to the BCMC as the first editor of a new monthly newsletter entitled, “The BC Mountaineer.” By 1925, mountaineering in the Coast Mountains had been contained within a one hundred mile radius of the City of Vancouver.
Background Description: Old black and white film footage pans over snow-capped mountain peaks.
Narrator speaks: Very little was known about the vast area of coastal peaks further north. During a pleasant lunch atop Vancouver Island’s Mount Arrowsmith, a torch was lit by the sight of a distant giant. In Don’s words,
Background Description: A caption reads, “‘It was the far off finger of destiny beckoning, a torch to set the imagination on fire.’ Don Munday.” More rough footage of mountains is shown.
Narrator speaks: The Mundays’ persistence of vision stayed clear.
Background Description: A newspaper shows portraits of Don and Phyllis and an article entitled Mount Waddington. The caption reads, “Vancouver Daily Province, July 20, 1928.” Then follows a photograph of Edith climbing as a small child. It is replaced by a view of a newspaper headline that says, “Party starting to climb Mystery Mountain believed highest in BC”. We are taken to a spectacular black and white shot of a snow-covered mountain peak, rocky and unforgiving.
Narrator speaks: For nearly a decade, with the help of a small support group, the undaunted couple left daughter Edith with relatives or friends and obsessively attempted the peak known today as Mount Waddington, the highest mountain entirely within British Columbia and the only one over 4000 meters high.
Background Description: Rough colour film footage shows Don and Phyllis in a rowboat heading towards us onshore and then they are seen on a bigger boat. The caption reads, “excerpts from ‘A Beckoning Peak’ Don Munday 1930’s.” Footage shows a comment, “It might have been worse,” followed by a scene of the boat stranded on a rock at low tide.
Phyllis Munday speaks: Well, we just went, first of all in a rowboat up Knight Inlet and cached the boat in the bush. Then, Don built a gas boat in the basement that took the wall of the house out.
Background Description: Film footage continues with a comment that says, “Through Bear Paw Canyon, we avoid a mile of ice falls on the glacier.” The film follows tracks in the snow, then a scene of hikers in single file passing through a narrow passageway with steep canyon walls on both sides. The next comment says, “Apex of the Coast Range, Mount Waddington.” We are shown a view of Mount Waddington from behind a person sitting facing the mountain. Next, two people can be seen walking along the top of a ridge of snow with clouds below.
Narrator speaks: In 1928, on their third attempt, they succeeded by full moonlight in reaching the slightly lower north-west summit at dawn. They would reach this summit twice over the next two years.
Background Description: A photograph shows one of Mount Waddington’s tall sharp peaks
Narrator speaks: But the main summit continued to disallow their presence.
Background Description: Colour footage shows two hikers on a thin log bridge very close to rushing water beneath them.
Narrator speaks: Their persistent and heroic exploits are recorded in Don’s book, “Mystery Mountain.” 1934 marked the end of the Mundays’ attempts on Mount Waddington.
Background Description: Film footage continues, showing the Mundays climbing up steep and rough rock, which then cuts to a scene of them walking away towards a sunset.
Phyllis Munday speaks: So many people, I find, they don’t see anything really, but actually you can see everything from under your feet to the sky above you.
Background Description: We are shown a part of a newspaper with a photograph of the mountain and a heading that says, “Mystery Peak Climbed.”
Narrator speaks: Finally in 1936, Fritz Wiessner and Bill House forged a way to the main summit.
Background Description: Old black and white film footage depicts Don and Phyllis talking and looking over a photograph camera in Phyllis’s hands.
Narrator speaks: Hearing news of the ascent, Phyllis Munday revealed insight and placid self-philosophy.
Background Description: Footage shows the Mundays continuing up a mountain away from us, first up rope then across a plateau with boulders. The caption quotes Phyllis, “We didn’t go into Waddington country just to climb one mountain and run out. We went into Waddington country to find out everything possible about the glaciers and mountains and nature.”
From: Passion for Mountains, produced by the British Columbia Mountaineering Club, directed by Bill Noble, 2007.
