Читать книгу Canadian Adventurers and Explorers Bundle - John Wilson - Страница 15

For Don and Phyl Munday the decades of the 1920s through 1940s were composed of two seasons – climbing season and preparation for climbing season. Climbing usually began in June and extended through September. Winter climbs were generally weekend jaunts close to Vancouver and did not require the same preparation as did the more extensive expeditions of the climbing season. In the winter Don concentrated on his writing and submitted many articles for publication. The previous season’s hiking and exploration provided plenty of raw material. He also wrote up his notes and researched the history of the areas they travelled into. Don spent a great deal of time corresponding with surveyors, archivists, and historians to learn what he could of past explorations and to locate old maps and writings, which he examined carefully for clues about potential routes or for information about rivers and watersheds.

Phyl cooking a meal, Last Valley Camp below the Franklin Glacier, 1933.

Don was a member of the International Commission on Snow and Glaciers and a member of several scientific societies. He corresponded with British scientists and passed on his firsthand observations of the huge snowfields, including the massive Franklin Glacier. At this time people were still unsure about whether glaciers moved or were static. Don’s detailed measurements and keen observations of specific features, combined with documentary photographs, made an important contribution to scientific understanding.

Nomenclature – the formal naming of geographic features such as rivers, creeks, mountains, valleys, and glaciers – is an important aspect of mapping. As they encountered each unnamed river or mountain, Don and Phyl named them, informally at first, so they would have a workable means of reference. Then, each winter they applied to the Geographic Board of Canada to formally register the names, complete with the requisite information about location, elevation, distance, extent and so on. Most of the names they proposed were descriptive in the sense that they recorded a characteristic in each name. Mountains gained names such as Stupendous, Silverthrone, Dauntless, Whitetip, Combatant, Whitemantle, Finality, and Monarch. Glaciers received names such as Marvel, Scimitar, Ice Valley, Chaos, Splinter, and Portal, while creeks became Fissure, Crevice, Scar, Tumult, and Fury. According to Phyl, the government accepted almost all of the Mundays’ nomenclature submissions. In 1928, to honour Phyl and Don, the Board designated a mountain adjacent to Waddington as Mount Munday (elevation 3505 metres). Naturally, one of the first things Phyl and Don did was to ensure that they were the very first to climb their own mountain.

Photography was a big part of their exploration documentation. Phyl was the principal photographer, starting as she did with a standard no-frills camera she described as an “ordinary Brownie with a click.” She graduated to a bellows camera with a good English lens, and then, as she required more detail, especially for her photos of flowers, she handled an Exakta with an exposure meter. For obvious reasons, she did not progress into large box cameras even though their large format allowed a greater range in image quality. A thirty-kilogram backpack was enough weight and bulk without adding such a fragile and bulky camera. They set up a darkroom in their house so Don could develop the film. Phyl generally did the printing, often with Edith assisting. Don also built an enlarger so they could control the entire photographic process and crop, enlarge, and print as they desired.

An important use of Phyl’s photography was in public education. She was a popular speaker and developed lantern slide shows to accompany her words. Lantern slides, a predecessor to thirty-five-millimetre photographic slides, were made of transparencies sandwiched between pieces of glass to form a slide. With the aid of a magnifying glass, Phyl painstakingly hand coloured the lantern slides, which were black and white. She soon specialized in detailed and very fine nature photography, for which she received much acclaim. She was in great demand for lectures on the beauties of nature and spoke on such topics such as alpine flora and fauna, mushrooms and fungi, snow scenery, and glaciation. Phyl worked hard to convey the wonders of nature to her audiences and to illustrate what she saw as Gods gift to humanity. She wanted people to look beyond the pretty pictures to a more profound understanding of the fragility of nature and the interdependence of species.

Preparing for the climbing season, Phyl and Don made sure that all their camping gear was in tiptop condition and that any rips or weaknesses were repaired. They rewaterproofed their “bone dry” clothing and the tent, renailed and waterproofed their boots, examined pack-boards for weaknesses, and checked over all the cooking supplies. One important task was to experiment with foodstuffs and find some new combinations for meals. Phyl dried apples and other fruits; she planned the menus and estimated the quantities of food they would need for a thirty- or forty-day expedition. The climbers had to carry everything in, so to avoid needless packing it was important to be accurate in estimating requirements. By the same token it was wise to plan for unexpected emergencies, to ensure some flexibility so that rations might extend longer if required. Over the winter they assembled the foods. Many items such as custard powder, tomatoes, peaches, meatballs, salmon, sardines, peas, and jam they purchased tinned. The tins were a natural for rough going because they did not easily break. As plastics had not yet come into use, perishables such as the flour, rolled oats, cornmeal, rice, sugar, butter, and cheese were repackaged into a homemade system of waterproof bags. Phyl melted wax in an old baking pan and then dipped cotton bags in it. When dry, these waxed bags would then be filled and placed into empty four-pound jam tins for extra waterproofing, or tied tight and packed in boxes ready for the boat. Cheese, macaroni, beans, nuts, chocolate, coffee, dried fruits and dried eggs all had to be stored and transported in such a way that they were protected from rain, ocean spray, river water, and humidity. The climbers’ very lives depended on the food they packed in, and all care was taken to ensure its safety.

Although some of their climbing companions complained that on Munday expeditions, the food lacked a certain variety after several weeks, Phyl had the art of campfire cooking down to a science. In time, her cooking even gained legendary status. She created a combination of bannock and pancakes known as “panics” and was known to always slip a treat or two into a meal at just the time when a simple thing such as a piece of canned fruit or a raisin-filled tapioca pudding really made the difference to an exhausted climbing group. In 1934 Don and a younger friend, Pip Brock, penned the following limerick in her honour.

There once was a lady named Phyllis,

Who did her goldarndest to fill us,

When we reached the last bite

We were filled up so tight,

That we thought she was trying to kill us.