Читать книгу Canadian Adventurers and Explorers Bundle - John Wilson - Страница 12

Weekends were for hiking and climbing. Don’s cabin on Dam Mountain served as a weekend retreat, but it wasn’t long until they contrived to live in the mountains. In the summer of 1923 local promoters who had purchased much of Grouse Mountain convinced Don and Phyl to partner in a venture to develop and open up Grouse for recreational use. In July, Don reported in the BCMC newsletter that beginning in August, a new trail up Grouse would be completed by “the interests who intend to place a hotel on the plateau.” This new route, which Don cut himself, began at the Lonsdale streetcar terminus, headed east to St. George Avenue, past a sawdust pile left over from an abandoned mill, along an old skid road up the open west slopes of Dome Mountain, to the trees at the edge of Mosquito Creek at 935 metres elevation. From here the new trail angled westward toward the end of the existing trail on the bare rocks overlooking the city and continued up above the east bank to the creek. It then zigzagged up the side of Grouse to the plateau. The trail boasted an easy gradient suitable for all foot traffic and for pack or saddle horses, the latter available for rent at trail-head from Don Munday. Don was also in charge of building a cabin, the first phase of the development before a chalet-style hotel was to be constructed. For this work, Don was to be paid five dollars a day.

To be more accessible to the mountain, Don and Phyl moved from South Vancouver to North Vancouver, at 162 King’s Road West. It wasn’t long until they realized the days could be more productive if they just stayed up on the mountain during the heavy, tiring days of building the log cabin on the edge of the bluff of Grouse Plateau. They lived beside Grouse Lake in a large canvas tent complete with cook stove. The stovepipe angled up through a hole in the canvas roof. The tent bore a wooden sign that read Alpine Lodge, the name of the as yet unfinished cabin. From this tent Phyl ran a refreshment stand and served sandwiches and cool drinks to hikers.

Many weeks went by as Don toiled. When the snow came, complications arose, not the least of which was living in a tent with baby Edith. The heavy snowfalls in the night meant that the Mundays had to set their alarm clock to wake them every hour, so they could get up and scrape the snow off the tent roof to prevent the whole thing from collapsing in. One night, Phyl woke with a start and put her hand up. The tent was practically right down on top of them! Hurriedly they put a wooden apple box over the sleeping Edith, in hope that it would give her air if the tent came down. With great care they squeezed out of the door and gently took the snow off in such a fashion that they did not leave the tent roof unevenly weighted.

Phyl wrote an account of their experience for the Vancouver Province newspaper. “Don spent every daylight hour working on a substantial log cabin, while I sawed and chopped firewood, cooked the meals, took care of my baby, scraped snow off the tent (every hour) and helped Don between whiles. The middle of December came with the weather getting worse and the snow deeper, so we knew we must soon move under a solid roof, or be buried under the wreckage of our tent. Even with two friends to help us, the situation was fast becoming desperate unless the weather relented. Part of the cabin was roofed but lacked floor and windows, and the walls were still unchinked. We watched the sky anxiously… by night the mountaintop was enveloped in a raging blizzard. The heavily iced edges of the fly whipped and crashed against the roof of the tent till it seemed the canvas could stand the strain no longer… We worked all that night. The usual five minutes walk to the cabin now took half an hour or more with fifty-pound bundles of floor boards on our backs… The only light was a feeble electric torch… One man laid flooring and one packed it from the tent, while I alternatively helped with both jobs. The other man worked without rest shovelling snow from the tent where my baby was peacefully sleeping through it all.” By dawn enough flooring had been laid to bring in their supplies and furniture. They nailed the frozen canvas fly from their tent over the unwalled section of the cabin and then used the cabin door as a sled for the first load.

“Edith thought that the wonderful world of snow must have been made purely for her own pleasure. She thoroughly enjoyed trip after trip from tent to cabin. Her joy relieved the strain on us, for we were all decidedly tired and the trips had to be made. By ten o’clock that night all the important things such as the stove, winter food supply, bedding, clothes and household equipment were safe under a solid roof.”

That night, ten days before Christmas 1923, the family moved in to the unfinished three-bedroom cabin. Phyl and Don were thankful to be under a safe and strong roof. But it was cold. The ceiling and inside of the logs were completely white with driven snow and frost, and the spaces between the logs had become chinked with snow. Phyl draped large canvas tarps over all their possessions, and then they lit fires in the big stone fireplace in the main room and the cast-iron stove in the kitchen. As the warmth of the fires circulated, everything dripped. The dripping lasted a long time, and as the spaces between the logs thawed, Phyl chinked them with sacking. They did not lack for water inside for many days until all the snow was thawed and had evaporated.

During the few remaining days before Christmas, Phyl managed to steal some time away from her family. She went down the mountain to the house on Kings Road, changed from her mountain gear, and travelled into Vancouver to shop for Christmas. Laden with parcels, she climbed back up to the cabin. Don cut down a balsam fir for their very first mountain Christmas tree, and they decorated it with their own ornaments carefully packed up the mountain. On Christmas Day, Phyl gave her stove its first real test when she cooked a turkey with all the trimmings.

For the Mundays, 1924 was a notable year, not the least because of their abode high above the city. “We were now out on the very edge of the world, 3000 feet sheer above the floor of Capilano Valley, out where you felt you could look out and face the world.” Alpine Lodge served not just as their home, but as a business offering “Meals, Refreshments etc. at all hours. Special prices for members of the B.C. Mountaineering Club and the Alpine Club of Canada.” A sign outside the front door listed “hot drinks, coffee 15 cents, soup 20 cents, sandwiches 20 cents, meals 1 dollar.” Phyl worked hard at this venture, but during the winter months, with no source of water, she was kept constantly busy melting snow into water to cook the meals and for drinking and to clean dishes afterward. The cabin had no electricity. The wood stove kept it heated, and oil lamps provided light at night. Everything was done by hand, and Phyl and Don were the only hands available. With a young child underfoot, operating the Alpine Lodge was a challenge.

It was in 1924 that Phyl achieved what no woman had done before her: she ascended the summit of Mount Robson, highest point in the Rocky Mountains. Fifty years later Phyl would remember the beautiful windless day and the clear unending sea of mountain peaks beneath her feet. “Its something I shall never forget if I live to be a hundred.”

But it wasn’t just the view from the summit that Phyl remembered. Robson had a reputation for being unpredictable and dangerous. The Mundays’ climb was fraught with danger. Two harrowing incidents on their ascent caused them to fall behind schedule and put their lives at risk. In the first situation one of the guides, Joe Saladana, fell and dropped his ice axe down a crevasse. It was a costly error. To go onwards without his ice axe was too dangerous. Ice axes, as all the party knew, were essential on such a climb; they were used not just for cutting steps, but as support on slippery slopes and as an anchor for dangerous sections. It was risky to proceed without it and equally risky to rescue it.

The second incident occurred when Annette Buck, the other woman in the party, disregarded orders – with consequences that were almost fatal. She was on Phyl’s rope in the rear position. In front of Buck was another climber, then Phyl, with guide Conrad Kain in the lead. Kain instructed them to move only one at a time and to drag themselves prone across a fragile ice bridge. Ignoring these instructions, Buck moved carelessly and quickly. The bridge shattered and she dropped into the crevasse, jerking the unprepared man above her from his footholds. He too fell. Don and his companions on the second rope watched helplessly while Phyl braced herself to hold the double weight and Conrad Kain frantically snatched in the slack. Kain knew he could not possibly check the three if they fell together any distance. But Phyl held them until the climbers regained their footholds and Kain took in all the rope.

As a result of these incidents the climbers were in danger of running out of daylight. When they finally reached the summit, Phyl and her rope companions only had a few minutes in which to savour their accomplishment before Kain lead them down and off the cornice to allow the second rope party (which included Don) to have their own brief moments at the top.

Phyl descended the steep and brittle mountain face. The climbers were single-file, the rope joining them for safety. Every movement was like hugging the edge of a swords blade, and a single misjudged step could put a companion in jeopardy. They passed the slight widening where the next four in their party awaited their return.

Now Don and the others would ascend. Phyl beamed at Don, who grinned back at her, and then she carried on with the other three climbers on her rope. On they trekked, sliding across the big, broken glacier, then traversing the edges of the crevasses – those great gaping cracks in the glacier that were too wide to jump across and often as deep as the glacier itself. Reckoning that the path of their ascent could also guide their descent, the climbing party intended to trace their earlier tracks. But soon they found it impossible. While they were higher up on Mount Robson, a snow avalanche – a constant phenomenon at these altitudes – had rolled across the mountain face below and had obliterated any trace of their footprints. Forced now to make their own way, they knew the descent would take more time than they had anticipated.

Following as best they could the landmarks remembered from the afternoon, the four continued on. They arrived at the ice wall – the edge of the glacier. On the ascent, Kain had spent considerable time and energy cutting steps into the wall so the party could climb up onto the glacier and continue towards the summit. To do this he first made a handhold in the ice and then, while holding fast, he swung his ice axe with the other hand, slashed at the surface to make a step, then used that step to stand on. He then made another hand hold, pulled himself up, and slashed away at the ice to make the next step. It was backbreaking and painfully slow work, but there was no alternative. The steps he fashioned in a zigzag as this pattern was safer than a straight vertical climb. Ropes linking each climber to the other provided some measure of safety on the ascent. The same would be true as they used the steps for their descent.

But without the benefit of the tracks of their ascent, finding the steps would be a challenge. As she looked around, matching landmarks to memory, Phyl walked a little off in one direction. This feels like it. Only one way to find out, she thought. “Conrad, let me check this place. It fits with my remembrance.” The other two came closer and they prepared to take the weight of Phyl’s body with the rope. “All right,” said the Austrian, as he dug his ice axe into the glacier. If she was wrong, they would have a blind search along the ice wall until they found it, and that would take up more of the precious daylight.

“This is it, I’m sure, Conrad. If you can support me with the rope, I’ll see.” Phyl turned with a twist and lowered herself slowly over the edge to feel for the first foothold. Linked by rope to their guide – who was now firmly planted to anchor the rope and prepared to support her weight – she suspended her lower half over the glacier’s edge, tentatively at first, feeling a bit like a spider floating out on its silken thread, wavering on the edge of nothingness. Then she connected.

“There it is.” The first step found. It was not such an easy task, blindly groping for the footholds at the glacier-edge, but she recalled their pattern and regularity and was soon down. The others followed, including Don’s party, who had finally caught up to Phyl’s. They were now off the upper glacier and on the moraine alongside. Here it was steep going but the ropes were not necessary, so they unroped and started down the rocks, carefully springing from one to the other, in hope that they could make quicker time on solid land. As the dusk settled in, it became slow work and not easy to keep the group together. Smoke from a brush fire somewhere far below on the mountain slopes drifted up to them in the twilight. The acrid smoke stung their eyes and complicated the visibility. Smoke was not what they needed. It was hard enough to see in the twilight. Off to the west, a gathering thunderstorm further obscured their vision. Distant thunder rumbled. Darkness approached rapidly.

“It’s just too hard to see on the rocks in this light.” Conrad declared as he held up his hands to signal a halt. I agree, thought Phyl. If one person twists an ankle or even worse, breaks a leg, the group will be in jeopardy. “We will have to remount the ice and hope that once out of the glacier shadow, we will be able to take advantage of all the remaining light.”

While Phyl, Don, and the others reharnessed their ropes, Kain went on ahead. Once more he cut steps into the glacier edge. Soon he was back, and they all climbed up onto the lower glacier. Because the dwindling light reflected off the snow and ice, travelling on top of this glacier proved less difficult than fumbling around on the dark rocks. Here they could see the way forward. On they continued, walking as fast as they safely could.

The time was just after 10 p.m. Five hours since Phyl stood on the summit and over nineteen hours since they began the climb from high-camp, and they were still far up the mountain. It was now obvious there was no way they would make it back to high-camp this night.

Now, only part way in their descent, they must stop to rest, but they could only do so in a safer place. The glacier face was too exposed. They needed to get to the shelter of the rocks below it and to a lower elevation. There was no easy route. Phyl, Don, and their companions looked around to locate the best way, but it was slow work as the angles of the ice could no longer be judged with any accuracy. Every move was tenuous. The light was almost spent, and all around them they heard the grunting and vibration of the ice pack. It was not pleasant there in the darkness on the glacier. Finally their guide made a decision.

“I’ve found a spot. It’s a bit tricky, but we don’t have any other options. We will have to cross a six-inch-wide ice bridge. A couple of steps farther and then we jump up – I know it is a blind jump, but trust me – onto an ice ledge where I have cut a foothold. From there, you will see the rock ledge below, and that is where we will spend the night.”

By 10:30 all eight of them were on the rock ledge. As she inched the thirty-five-kilogram pack off her shoulders and then sank to her knees on the stony ground, Phyl let out a sigh. “Oh,” she murmured and turned over so she sat leaning up against her pack. “Who would have thought that it would feel so wonderful just to stop moving forward!” Don joined her. “What we need now is some food. Do you realize that it is almost twenty-four hours since we ate breakfast?”

“Yes,” Phyl replied. “Eating was the last thing I thought of, although I did manage a small handful of iron rations just before that final push to the top. Those raisins and nuts gave me something to chew on, although I confess I don’t actually remember eating them, my mind was so intent on the climb. It’s amazing what the human body can do.” And then she added, “I carried a treat with me today for us to celebrate our climb.” She opened the canvas flap on one side of her pack and pulled out a bundle.

“Oh, I might have known it,” laughed Don, pointing and calling to Conrad and the others. “Look what Phyl smuggled up to the summit of Robson.” With a smile of glee, Phyl held up her treasure. It was a small can of pineapple. “There is enough for everyone to share,” she said. “It’s a special treat to go with the rest of our food.” Everyone cheered. Now that they had stopped, the climbers began to relax. Hands dug into packs to bring out small stashes of food, and they all shared.

They were at an elevation of 3200 metres above sea level. Clouds hung low all around them on the glacier and on the shoulders and cliffs of the mountain. The night grew bitter and the cool glacier breeze insured that no one could keep very warm at all, but they were thankful it neither rained nor snowed. They huddled together and tried to sleep. Sleep came only in snatches because the mountain noises and their precarious position ensured they could never fully relax. Rolling echoes reverberated as falling ice crashed down from the glacier walls and loose snowbanks shifted in the night winds.

At 3:30 a.m., Kain roused them all. It was still dark, but dawn was quickly approaching. The climbers groaned in agony and pulled their cold, stiffened limbs into action. They felt clumsy at first as they reacquainted their legs with movement, but soon they adjusted. As the light increased, climbing became easier. An hour and a half later the group approached high-camp at the timberline on the southwest face. The guide let out one of his famous greetings, a loud yodel, to announce their arrival.

Herbert Newcombe, who was the cook stationed at the high-camp, had soup, toast, and tea ready for them. High-camp was only a transition. Its provisions were slim and consisted of the basics – Herbert, three tents, and a stove, cooking utensils, and bedding. But this morning the camp was a busy place. The next group had arrived and were awaiting their turn to climb with Conrad Kain and to try for the summit of Mount Robson. The Mundays and their climbing partners could not rest here, so they said goodbye and thank you to Kain, who would remain at this camp to sleep before venturing up the mountain again tomorrow.

At 7 a.m. they continued their descent along the extremely steep route over bare rocks. In places, ropes had been permanently fixed into the rocks to assist climbers. Down they clambered and emerged at Lake Kinney Camp (elevation 2969 metres). Here they enjoyed a good, long second breakfast. But they could not rest yet. They were still on the mountain.

The Mundays tramped down the long and dusty trail to the Alpine Club of Canada’s main-camp in Robson Pass some twenty-five kilometres distant. The weather was dry and hot, and the trail seemed endless. Phyl encouraged herself to keep going. They had been through all the dangerous parts, had surmounted obstacles she had never encountered in previous mountain climbs, and had attained their goal – a successful ascent of the highest peak in the Rocky Mountains. This last bit, though, seemed to stretch on forever. The heat from the sun threatened to overpower their exhausted bodies, a tremendous change from the freezing temperatures higher up. On they trudged, and about 2 p.m. they arrived at the main-camp with its dozens of tents, the large cooking and mess tents and the community firepits nestled amid the trees. With the exception of the five hours of so-called “rest” on the rocks the night before, the party had been on the go for almost thirty-five hours, since 3:30 a.m. the previous day.

At last they could stop. Friends helped them take off packs. Word of their return spread quickly, and the campers gathered to congratulate and pepper them with questions. The climbers’ throats were parched and swollen. Rest was what they required, and then, slowly, tea and soup would work wonders. As they eased their tired bodies into their canvas tent and onto their eiderdown sleeping bags, Phyl whispered to Don. “Can you think of a better life? This is the best!”

Climbing Robson was the first time Phyl or Don had climbed with professional mountain guides, and it was also the first time they had been on different rope parties. The difficulties they had encountered on the climb had resulted from others’ errors in judgment. Phyl and Don were convinced that these situations would not have occurred if they had been climbing together on the same rope and with hand-picked companions they could trust. They decided that they would never again be separated. The more they climbed, the more they melded completely as a team, each so aware of the other’s position and intuitive to every move. It was a combination that couldn’t be beaten.

For some time after moving into the Alpine Lodge, Phyl persevered as a Guide Captain although she had to travel for two hours down Grouse Mountain (and then back up again) to attend the Company meetings. She stopped each way at the Kings Road house to change her clothes. It was a long trip and a big commitment. She travelled down at dusk and returned in the dark, following the trail through the forest with just the light of her “bug,” a candle pushed up a hole in the side of a jam tin. This was her only trail light. An owl talked to her each time she passed a particular spot on the trail. Every time he called, Phyl would answer, he would reply, and she would answer again. Each trip this went on until she was safely out of the woods and on to the plateau. Don always had a lamp lit in the cabin window to guide her for the last part of the trip.

Was it lonely? Was she frightened? Perhaps, but she managed for as long as she was able. Finally, though, it was just too much, and Phyl requested a leave of absence from her position as Captain. With the exception of seven weeks in the spring of 1921 after the birth of Edith, this was her first absence since starting the Company in 1910.

It hurt Phyl to leave the girls and to lose the comradeship. Up on Grouse Mountain, the isolation of her situation struck her in a way she had not considered before. “There must be girls out there spread out on the coast in isolated spots who are also unable to travel and join up with other girls. Yes, think of it, all the small logging camps, the fishing communities, and the mining towns. Surely Guides can come to them, and like them I can be linked also!”

Within months of her request for a leave of absence, Phyl became convinced that she could continue Guiding while on Grouse Mountain. But to do so she must form a new and completely separate Company of girls, not in Vancouver but in isolated circumstances, girls who would otherwise have to give up Guiding, or never know Guiding. In March 1924 Phyl organized and registered the 1st Company of Lone Guides. She registered it initially as part of North Vancouver and then, as it began to serve a much wider base, as a provincial Company.

The cabin on Grouse Mountain became, at 1270 metres elevation, the highest Girl Guide headquarters in all of Canada. Phyl found girls, and they found her. She did not have many in the Lones Company at first, but they were scattered from Alaska to California and into Alberta. Phyl began to pull these girls together with an ordinary letter as a means of communication, but she soon fell upon a better scheme. She started a progressive newsletter that began with a message to the girls from Phyl as Captain, and news and greetings from each Patrol Leader. She filled several more pages – with riddles and information on nature, questions and answers on knots or other Guide work, songs and stories – all illustrated by either drawings or pictures. She added updates on each girl in the Company, including biographical information, so that Lone Guides could get to know each other remotely. Phyl then sent the newsletter in the mail to one girl in the Company. The roll call was their mailing list. Each girl had set dates that she might keep the newsletter before passing it on to the next girl on the list. At the end of the newsletter was a “Post Box” where girls could write little notes from one to another, and so in this way they could also communicate with each other as they passed the newsletter on. Phyl even conducted inspection by reading the girls’ answers to questions posed in the newsletter. For instance, one month she might ask: “Is your top dresser drawer tidy enough for Captain to inspect?” Lone Guides were trusted to answer honestly, which they did. One girl responded to that particular question by confessing: “Well, not exactly Capt. but it will be next time.”

As the Lones membership increased, the time it took for the newsletter to circulate amongst the patrol members lengthened – especially in the winter. One girl wrote in the Post Box section of the newsletter, apologizing for the delay in forwarding. “I am sorry it’s late but it’s been forty below here and no one went for the mail, five miles away, for three weeks.”

In 1927 Phyl became Provincial Lone Secretary and she now officially co-ordinated the Lones movement over all of B.C. The small Lone Guides Company she began three years earlier had grown beyond her initial vision, and her extraordinary work was acknowledged to be much more than that of a local responsibility. But even with the new title, Phyl struggled to find women who would commit themselves to assisting in the movement. Guiders – those adult leaders in Guiding – were difficult to recruit normally, but to find and nurture a Guider isolated by distance presented extraordinary demands.

It was not until 1931 that Phyl was able to split up the original company into more manageable sizes and register a second one based out of Kamloops. Other companies soon followed. Phyl somehow kept the companies, their captains and lieutenants, and the movement itself centred and dynamic. From the tiny germ of an idea initiated because of her personal situation, and definitely motivated as a solace to her own self, the Lone Guides movement grew and thrived under Phyl’s dynamic leadership. She transformed it into an ongoing passion – one that continued long after she and her family moved back to Vancouver and off the mountain.