Don was also in the throes of writing a book about Mount Waddington, which would feature the Mundays’ adventures and discoveries from the time they first glimpsed their Mystery Mountain all those years ago in 1925. The Unknown Mountain had an English publisher and was launched in 1948, just two short years before Don’s untimely death.
Phyl could see Don’s gradual weakening, his fatigue and loss of fitness. She knew Don was a proud man, so neither of them spoke of it to others, and she did what she could to take the strain off any expectations others might have for him, especially when in the outdoors with friends. In November 1949 he was admitted to hospital, and six months later, on 12 June 1950, Don Munday succumbed to lobar pneumonia with bronchial asthma a significant contributing factor. His lungs and bronchial tubes never completely recovered from the effects of gassing in the trenches in France.
Phyl was devastated by Don’s death. Edith was far away in England, and for Phyl, her daughter’s absence made the situation doubly difficult. In early July, accompanied by climbing friend Neal Carter, Phyl chartered a small airplane, and they headed up the coast to fly high over Mount Munday. As the sun shone through the parted clouds, she looked once more upon their favourite country and scattered Don’s ashes as he had wished, over the wild white glaciers and snowy peaks.
“I’ve lost my anchor,” Phyl cried out. “With Don I’ve had the best thirty years. We are a team, and now, I have to carry on without him. I’m fifty-five years old, and I’m not sure that I can do it alone.” But do it she did. Phyl continued with the Alpine Club, worked for several years as an editor of the Alpine Journal, and for two more decades participated in the club’s annual camps. She established herself in what she called “the blister tent” and provided first aid to the tired feet of many hikers. As she eased into her sixties she continued to climb, although on easier and shorter trips. Without Don as a partner, Phyl did not attempt the complicated climbs. They had been such a twosome that even after all her years of serious climbing she could not face these challenges without him. It was just too poignant. Neither could she face continuing in a project they had both been working on for some years, a project very dear to her heart. Mountain Wild Flowers of Canada was in the proofing stages at the time of Don’s death. The book was to be a showcase of Phyl’s exquisite photos of alpine flora accompanied by botanical and environmental information. It was never published.
For years, beginning in her mid-twenties, Phyl suffered from arthritis in her knees. Many nights in the privacy of the Mundays’ tent she wrapped cool compresses around her sore knees to reduce the swelling. She often was in too much pain to sleep, yet would get up the next day and continue to hike or climb. Phyl made light of the situation and claimed her condition was only “a bit of a nuisance.” Her accomplishments are even more remarkable given this physical condition. But just as Phyl protected Don and assisted him with his weak left arm, he protected her so that only very few people ever guessed at the agonies she went through.
Guiding remained a constant source of inspiration for Phyl. Her responsibilities as Divisional Commissioner for the North Shore skyrocketed as more and more families moved in to the area. Finally, in 1956, the district was divided into two, reflecting the municipalities of West Vancouver and North Vancouver. Phyl retained the North Vancouver responsibility for several years longer, and served as Provincial Nature and Woodcraft Advisor through to the 1980s. In 1985, at Point Atkinson, the Girl Guides named the Phyl Munday Nature House in Lighthouse Park in her honour, an appropriate gesture that made Phyl very happy. She was pleased to have her name associated with an ongoing site to facilitate teaching Girl Guides about the wonders of the natural world.
Phyl went back twice more to Waddington, although neither time did she backpack in as she was used to. In 1955 she accompanied Sir Edmund Hillary, famed for his ascent of Mount Everest, on an airplane tour over the area. Her final opportunity came in 1982 as a result of an article titled “Whirling into Frozen Time” in Beautiful British Columbia Magazine about a helicopter trip on to the Homathko Icefield and flying over Waddington. The author interviewed Phyl after the trip and then quoted her in the article.
“Oh, I would give anything to go, and I would go to the Homathko and to Waddington. I think I would just weep if I saw the glaciers… I would love to be able to go in a helicopter so I could be put down on a glacier. I would put on my old boots with the tricouni nails on them, take my crampons and walk around for the sheer joy of it.”
As a result of Phyl’s musings, an anonymous donor paid for her to take such a visit by helicopter. A camera crew for the television show “Thrill of a Lifetime” accompanied her as she stepped out on to the Homathko glacier for the first time in almost fifty years. She wore her old boots and her Guide hat and carried her trusty ice axe. Although she had made many first ascents, this helicopter trip truly was a “thrill,” for at age eighty-eight she was frail from a recent fall and her ongoing arthritis. She was imprisoned in a body that could no longer escape to the mountains.
“If I had my life to live over again, I would step out of these awful old slippers and into my climbing boots and start off on the exact same road… providing of course I could have Don.” Phyl saw mountains and all of nature as a sacred trust. “We are only the temporary guardians of the earth and without our respect and love it can’t last.” This belief motivated her all those years when she could not climb, but could instead describe nature’s wonders to others. “I have stood on top of a mountain and seen the breathtaking perfection of the earth below.”
Epilogue
Rewarded Beyond Measure
Phyllis Munday received numerous honours and decorations in her lifetime, not only for her mountain climbing, but for her service to others, notably in the St. John Ambulance Brigade and in Girl Guides. In 1938 the Alpine Club of Canada made her an honorary member and later named her honorary president in 1971. She held honorary memberships in the American Alpine Club (1967), the Appalachian Mountain Club, and the Ladies’ Alpine Club in England. In 1947 the Canadian Council of Girl Guides awarded her its Beaver, the highest honour a Guider could achieve. In 1967 she was named Dame of Grace for her voluntary work in St. John Ambulance Brigade. The University of Victoria conferred on her the title and degree of Doctor of Laws. In 1972 Governor General Roland Michener presented her with the Order of Canada.
Phyl and Don Munday sit on the summit of Mount Reliance
and look towards Mount Queen Bess, 1942. “
And finally, with all the world at my feet, I will sit exalted
on the summit, and just look, and look, and look…”
Phyl climbed close to one hundred mountains and made over thirty first ascents, many times being the first woman to reach the summit. Asked whether she thought that she was a role model for other women, Phyl replied in her typical and modest way:
“I don’t know what women really thought of me… Because if a person enjoys it and you are strong enough, and well enough to do it, and you can hold your own with a party… then there is no reason in the world why a woman can’t do it [mountaineering].”
In