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Prologue

On Top of the World

Austrian guide Conrad Kain pulled a red handkerchief from his hip pocket, lifted his felt fedora off his head, and wiped his brow. He then looked below to the first of the roped climbers who followed. Of all the clients I have had in the last fifteen years, I’ll remember this one, he thought. She is stronger than most men, and has a head on her shoulders. Didn’t once panic when that American woman almost got us all killed. I owe her for that one; it could have been a disaster. I’m glad this honour is all her own.

He then began to loop the hemp rope dangling from his waist, to gather the slack as his climbing companion – linked by this rope – moved up to join him. Phyllis Munday negotiated the last few steep and brittle steps over the crumbling ice and stepped up beside him. It was 4:30 p.m. on 29 July 1924.

Kain held out his arms and clasped her hand in his own. He pumped an excited handshake. “There, Lady! Here is the top of Mount Robson! You are the first woman on this peak – the highest of the Rocky Mountains.”

Phyl’s exhaustion disappeared and her face was transformed by a huge smile as she responded to the man’s enthusiastic gesture.

“Now Conrad, stop before my arm falls off!” She reached up and removed her snow glasses from her face. The thirteen-hour climb from high-camp vanished from her thoughts. Here she stood on this narrowest ridge of broken ice covered with snow. She was 3954 metres above sea level. Here, nothing around her was higher – only air.

She took a deep breath of ice-chilled air. Soon it would be time to let the others have their time on the summit. But for now, it was all her own. She quickly thrust thoughts of the arduous ascent to the back of her mind. It had been harrowing and full of challenges, but there would be plenty of time to go over all those events later. This moment – now – here on the summit was for her alone.

The summit of Mount Robson was a great wind-driven snow cornice – capping the highest exposed rock on the mountain but projecting out and over it, without support. The narrow summit ridge was broken ice covered with snow. It was brittle and very steep, suitable for only one person at a time. Footsteps broke away bits of snow and ice and made each movement risky on this fragile surface. An avalanche here would shoot them all to certain death down one thousand metres, then over an enormous cliff of ice to the lower glacier.

Soon she would have to move back to allow her two other rope companions their turn. Her husband Don, with the second rope party, huddled some fifteen metres below her in the shelter of another great cornice. These four climbers also patiently awaited their turn on the top.

Phyl thought of Don and knew he would be wondering if she had yet made the top. She then focussed her vision beyond his resting spot and down even farther, studying the scene far below her. Her eyes travelled swiftly over the icy slopes that were dwarfed and somehow less daunting from this perspective.

Phyl looked down both sides of the mountain. To the north she could see Berg Lake almost three kilometres straight down, and over to the south in Robson Pass she could see the main-camp tents, which appeared to be mere specks. The comfort of “home” was a long way off. She lifted her gaze upwards, across the horizon, where range upon range of white, shimmering mountains spread out beneath her, beckoning, tempting. In any direction, for thousands and thousands of square kilometres, an unlimited vista of mountains, glaciers, snowfields, lakes, and waterways met her gaze.

Phyl savoured the moment – after all, it had been four years in the coming, four years of ambition and aspiration. She thought of all those climbs back home, the mountaineering adventures and challenges that had toned her body and prepared her mind for this ascent. She was the first woman up and a member of the third-ever party to make this climb. On the summit of Mount Robson in the Rocky Mountains, she stood five hundred metres above the highest point of any other mountain in the range. What a triumph! At this moment she was on top of the world, queen of all she surveyed. Unexpectedly, tears of emotion welled up.

No, she thought, there’s plenty of time for that. I only have a few minutes here at the top, and I have to record everything in my mind so I will always remember. She willed the tears away and focussed instead on the majesty of the scene that lay before her.

“This moment is a four-year dream come true, Conrad. Thank you for leading us up.” Kain smiled back. He too was delighted. He felt privileged to be back up on the mountain that had not been climbed since his own “first ascent” in 1913.

Turning slowly, Phyl looked down at her feet. There, stuck in the snow on the summit beside her, was a small film pack tab from Bert Pollard’s camera. It looked so alien, so unnatural – brown and black nitrate against the white snow. But that is exactly why it was there. Pollard had made the ascent of the peak with Conrad Kain the previous day in the climbing party that returned to the high-camp with Kain while the Mundays awaited their turn. Bert Pollard had carried his camera to the peak to record the view and had placed the tab in the snow, where it would be seen by the next climbers and thus provide personal evidence of his own successful ascent. It is difficult to leave a permanent record on such a thin slice of mountaintop, for the constant grinding forces of wind, snow, and weather quickly sweep away any traces. Pollard knew that, but nevertheless it was a poignant gesture. Gently Phyl plucked the tab from the snow. She held it up for the guide to see, then turned it round and over before carefully resetting it up in the snow.

“There, that’s my marker. Phyllis Beatrice James Munday was here!”

The hour was late, and their comrades awaited them just below the summit cornice. “I’m afraid that we cannot linger here on the summit,” Kain remarked with an apologetic look on his face. “I must let the others have their turn and then we will all have to begin the descent before we run out of daylight. I don’t fancy a night on the mountain, at least at this altitude! It’s not stable up here – just look at the shifting snow – and the temperature will drop at least twenty degrees overnight.” With that last remark, Kain held out the looped Beale rope to show Phyl. The rope was frozen stiff and hard, a testament to the coldness of the air, which Phyl had forgotten for the last few minutes, as she surveyed the scene from the summit.

There were eight climbers that day, four on each rope. Each would have their time at the top. Phyl moved off to allow the next two their turn. Ten minutes of pleasure and five of teeth chattering, that’s how Kain described their brief reward on the summit. “A night out is hardly ever agreeable, and above 3000 metres, always a lottery,” he commented. “We four must get down and let the others up. Time is now of the essence.”

Twenty-one-year-old Phyllis James on the B.C. Mountaineering

Club trail up Grouse Mountain, ca 1916.