1934 First Ascent of Mount Waddington Northwest Peak by Don and Phyllis Munday

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Don Munday

Born on March 16, 1890, in London, Ontario, Don Munday was raised in southwestern Manitoba and Vancouver, developing an early passion for wild, untracked mountains. Volunteering for military service during World War I, Munday served with the 47th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force in France. At the Battle of the Somme in 1916, he was shot in the chest and arm by German machine-gun fire and buried alive in an artillery crater. Told by military doctors that his damaged lungs and shrapnel-riddled body would leave him an invalid, Munday resolved to rehabilitate himself in the high alpine air of British Columbia. In 1920, he married Phyllis James, initiating a historic partnership that revolutionized Canadian exploratory cartography. In 1925, sighting a gargantuan, unmapped cloud-cloaked massif from Vancouver Island, Munday became obsessed with proving that a mountain exceeding 13,000 feet existed within the Coast Range, directly defying official government surveys that placed the range's ceiling at 10,000 feet. For over ten seasons, Don and Phyllis navigated treacherous coastal fiords in open boats, chopped through dense coastal salal brush, and explored the thirty-mile-long Franklin and Tiedemann glaciers. On July 7, 1934, they made the historic first ascent of Mount Waddington's northwest snow summit at 4,000 metres. Munday documented this monumental saga in his 1948 literary classic The Unknown Mountain. Munday passed away in Vancouver in June 1950, revered as one of Canada's most courageous and visionary mountain explorers.

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Phyllis Munday

Born on September 24, 1894, in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) as Phyllis James, she moved with her family to Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1901. Blessed with boundless energy, supreme stamina, and an intrepid love of the wilderness, she became one of the earliest female members of the British Columbia Mountaineering Club. In 1912, she completed the first ascent of Mount Crown near Vancouver. In 1920, she married wounded World War I veteran and fellow mountaineer Don Munday, forging a fifty-year partnership that defined Canadian exploratory mountaineering. In 1925, while climbing Mount Arrowsmith on Vancouver Island, Phyllis and Don spotted a colossal, unknown snow and rock spire towering over the mainland horizon. Intrigued by this Mystery Mountain, the couple spent the next decade mounting eleven grueling expeditions into the dense, trackless coastal rainforests, untamed grizzly country, and colossal tidewater glaciers of the Coast Mountains. Hauling sixty-pound packs, navigating glaciers in skirted climbing gear, and establishing bush camps for months, Phyllis proved equal to any male mountaineer of her era. On July 7, 1934, she and Don achieved the historic first ascent of Mount Waddington's northwest snow summit at 4,000 metres. Beyond climbing, Phyllis served as a pioneering St. John Ambulance instructor and devoted over sixty years to the Girl Guides of Canada. She was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 1973, recognized universally as one of the greatest outdoor pioneers in North American history.