Don Munday (1888-1950) has lived in the shadow, in many ways, of his better known wife, Phyllis Munday (1894-1990). Both Don and Phyllis were unique mountaineers and pioneers in exploring the Coastal Range. Don wrote a variety of succinct articles on his many treks to the ancient rock sentinels, and most of them were published in a variety of magazines. I will all too briefly light but not land long on just a few of these articles—they are, in some ways, part of the mountain memoirs of Don Munday.

I have a fine signed copy by Don Munday’s of his 18 page booklet ‘Explorations in the Coast Range of British Columbia’. The article had been published in the American Geographical Society, and it was reprinted as a pamphlet in April 1928 in The Geographical Review. The booklet is a discussion of Munday’s trips to Mystery Mountain (or what would come to be called Mount Waddington). The pamphlet is neatly divided into 9 short yet pithy sections: Introduction, First View of the Mountain (1925), The Homathko Valley, Expedition of 1926: Up the Homathko, Waddington Glacier, Mystery Pass and the Big Mountain, Explorations of 1927, Ascent of the Mountain and Conclusion.

The many fine black and white photos in ‘Explorations in the Coast Range of British Columbia’ were some of the first of their kind, the footnotes are detailed and precise, the maps illuminating and  the possibilities for future explorations and climbs set clearly before the curious mountaineer. Don was part mountaineer and part scientist, part geologist and part glaciologist—his abilities and curiosity knew few bounds. ‘Explorations in the Coast Range of British Columbia’ is a must read for those keen to know about the early treks into the Waddington area. The way Don blends a journalist style with substantive content is a model way of writing not to miss.

I also have a signed copy of The British Ski Year Book and The Ski Club of Great Britain and the Alpine Ski Club (1931) by Phyllis Munday. Don’s 9 page article in the tome, ‘In the heart of the Coast Range’, returns, of course, to his passion: the Coast Range. The article begins this way: ’Ski-mountaineering in the Canadian mountains is still in its infancy. The great ranges, each of which is tens of thousands of square miles in area, from the Rockies to Vancouver Island, offer bewildering scope for unexplored tours and virgin ascents’. Don was, obviously, decades ahead of his time in seeing the ski possibilities for the Coast Range. The short article is replete with engaging black and white photos (that Don had meticulously developed) of both the vast Coastal mountain ranges and climbers on the glaciers. The photos of the climbers (skis by side) at 9,000 feet in Ice Valley and of the North Peak of Mt. Munday are real keepers. Don had a unique ability to both describe his treks to the Coast Range and do so in such a way in which much was learned about the challenges of the mountain terrain at the same time. It is quite understandable why he could sell his articles and make a living of sorts as a writer and mountaineer. There is little doubt that the readers of The British Ski Year Book would be drawn into Don’s well told tale of ski possibilities of the Coast Range, although few had made the trips to this barren snow and ice mecca to ski on the glaciers in the 1930s. Don was decades ahead of his time in describing what he had seen and done and what others in the future might yet do. Few thought at the time of skiing in the Coast Range, but Don and friends charted the path for many board to white slope delights.

I have yet another signed copy by Don Munday of The British Ski Year Book of The Ski Club of Great Britain and the Alpine Ski Club (1933) in which Don contributed. Don has an incisive letter to the editor (170-172) on ‘Cornices’. Don described, in fascinating detail, his interpretation of the formation of cornices, their varied forms and fractures. He even did a drawing to illustrate his read and attitude towards cornices. Don, in the extended letter, is replying to a longer article on cornices that had been published in a previous edition of The British Ski Year Book. It should be noted that The British Ski Year Book was of the highest quality and one of the few books published at the time that dealt with mountaineering and skiing in an off piste way. Don was the only Canadian at the time writing about the Coastal Range in the way he did for such a high end ski journal that was respected at the international level in Europe and beyond.

British Columbia Digest was one of the first magazines in British Columbia that lauded and held high the outdoor possibilities of the province (and much else). Don Munday, true to form, published a poignant article in the March 1946 edition: ‘Skyline Instructors’. ‘Skyline Instructors’ is just 4 meagre pages (86-89), but in the missive, Don made it clear that ‘The growing development of skiing makes it possible for a guide to find employment in winter as well as summer’. Don was very much at the forefront in this compact yet suggestive article in urging potential mountaineers to take the vocational step as year round guides. Winter mountaineering and skiing in the winter had not yet been fully developed (it was merely in its infancy in the 1930s-1940s), but Don thought there was much to commend such a direction for Canadians.  In fact, Don called, in the article, for a new generation of Canadians to be less dependent on the Swiss and British (and others) as mountain guides and take leadership in the area. The article is a plea for Canadians to take serious the possibilities for winter skiing leadership and get the training to do so. The article covers more than winter mountaineering, but Don, as a leader of the Canadian mountaineering ethos by the 1940s, knew the time had come for Canadians to become guides in their own country---in this sense, Don was ahead of his time. He was, in fact, urging for the formation of trained guides (‘Instructors’) that could and would competently lead the interested and eager up to the Alpine (‘Skyline’) and bring them down safely again. ‘Skyline Instructors’ is a must read if for no other reasons that Don anticipated the future of Canadian mountaineering and the formation of the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides.

Don Munday died in 1950, and by the time of his passing he had become the dean of West Coast mountaineering. Phyllis lived for 40 years after Don died. She contributed much to BC mountain and outdoors life, and when she died she was very much the grand lady of West Coast mountaineering.   Don was, though, a thoughtful mountaineer who contributed much to mountain culture in BC, Canada and beyond. ‘Explorations in the Coast Range of British Columbia’, ‘In the Heart of the Coast Range’, ‘Letter on Cornices’ and ‘Skyline Instructors’ are but four offering by Don from his memoirs of a well informed mountain life.

Berg Heil

Ron Dart