Baby Munday

There’s a lovely little group of mountains about 70 miles east of Vancouver called the Cheam Range. There’s general agreement that the hardest climb in there is one called Baby Munday Peak. Strange name, right? A prominent mountaineering couple, Don and Phyllis Munday, named it after their baby Edith who was born in 1921. The peak wasn’t climbed until 1933. Many years later, in 1978 to be exact, I went into the area on a wintery day with 3 friends – Ross, Ken and Brian. The 3 of us climbed Stewart Peak and The Still, but Brian Rundle and I had our sights set on Baby Munday.

He and I set out from a frozen lake at 6,400 feet – it was 2:00 PM. We climbed in a westerly direction up to the south ridge, where the real climbing started. We had no rope, and if we had brought crampons, we didn’t use them. The only detail I recall was that, very close to the top, there was an airy gap that we had to cross, a big step which had hundreds of feet of thin air below it. A stone dropped from the gap sailed free and landed with a plunk on the snow far below. A gripping move with no protection. We made it to the summit okay, though.

Now here are a few facts to give you an idea of how much standards have changed over the years. Dick Culbert in his 1974 guidebook said that the ridge was Class 3. Bruce Fairley says in his 1986 guidebook that it is Class 3 to 4 on loose rock and requires a rope, and he goes on to say that, under winter conditions (which we certainly had that day) “this route can provide an enjoyably exposed and corniced Class 4 route.” My notes from that day say that we experienced plenty of difficulties, but the main takeaway for me was the breathtaking exposure in places. The summit sits at an elevation of 7,200 feet. Brian and I downclimbed everything with no rope, with no rappels. We were back at camp by the lake 4 1/2 hours after we started.

Present-day parties usually rope up for the climb and often wear rock-climbing shoes. We climbed it in heavy rigid-sole mountaineering boots. Present-day parties usually do up to 4 rappels when they downclimb the route, whereas we did none – we did it the old-fashioned way, climbing back down using just our hands and feet. In retrospect, I’d say we were a couple of bad-asses. Brian puts it differently, saying that dumb-asses might be a more appropriate term.

Too Far South?

Nineteenth-century mariners had a dramatic expression they used when talking about sailing into far southern ocean waters:

“Beyond 40 degrees south, there is no law; beyond 50 degrees south, there is no God.”

Paints quite a picture, doesn’t it? Certainly sums up their fears.

Wands

Sometimes climbers use wands. They are often made of bamboo and will have something bright on the ends so they are highly visible in bad weather. If you stick one in the snow one rope-length from the last one you placed, they can help you find your way back to your camp, or anywhere else for that matter, even in the worst weather. In 1989 on a climb of Mount Robson, we used them. Here is a picture which shows a bundle of them sticking up behind me on my pack.

We used them to mark things around our camp, as seen in this shot.

On our first attempt on the Kain Face, we placed them as we climbed. Half-way up the 50-degree face, the weather turned so foul so quickly that we were forced to retreat. Imagine our shock when we saw that the wands had been torn out of the slope by the ferocity of the storm. We found them in a pile at the bottom of the face!

Almost Blundered

Two of us were in the middle of a stealth climb that was one for the ages. We had started during the night, and during those 3 hours of darkness we were almost caught twice by the authorities. They didn’t catch us, though. Daylight finally arrived, and after having climbed 2 nice peaks, we were on our way to the third and final one of the day. Perhaps we had let our guard down, feeling somewhat invincible after our 2 successful escapes many hours earlier. I say that because around three o’clock in the afternoon, we were moving along an old military road in the desert, paying more attention to our conversation than our surroundings. We looked up and saw that a short distance ahead was a communications tower in a cleared area, with a couple of military vehicles parked at its base. In another couple of minutes we would have walked right up to them. The moment we saw them, we ducked out of sight and then carefully headed off at a right angle to our previous path. That change of direction worked out well, though, because three miles later we arrived at that third and last peak of the day. You can bet that we talked about that narrow escape for a while.

Chiltepín

On my first trip to Mexico in 1970 with my friend Dan, we stopped in Guadalajara to gas up his car. Two girls about our age were hanging out at the gas station and we struck up a conversation with them. They were eating small red chilies from a little paper bag. When they offered us some, we kindly refused, as they had already told us that the peppers were quite hot. Not for them, though, as they were eating them like candy – they were chiltipín peppers.

Many years later, in 2004 to be exact, I was driving the rough road up Fresnal Canyon on the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation. I saw a pick-up truck parked off to the side of the road ahead, and a family a short distance away on the mountain slope. I parked, then walked over to where they were gathering something from bushes. It turns out that they were gathering wild chiltipín peppers, something they did in that place each year. They offered me some, but I politely refused, confessing that they’d be too hot for my liking. This was at 3,500 feet elevation.

So, I learned that they did indeed grow wild here in Arizona. Further study led me to understand that chiltipíns are considered the ancestors of many kinds of peppers that we commonly see today grown on farms and in our markets.

Mister Miller

Twenty years ago, I did some major home repairs for a nice gent who was quite a bit older than me. He was originally from Texas and I always got a kick out of the colorful expressions he used. I was having to get permits for the work, and sometimes the folks downtown where approvals needed to be obtained were throwing roadblocks in our path. One day, I went to his home after learning that the next phase of our work would be delayed by the permit folks. Mister Miller saw me walking up to his front door looking pretty unhappy. When I walked in, he said “I can see by the look on your face that them sumbitches down at the gummint office are giving us more trouble!” It was all I could do to keep myself from laughing.

Burnt Sneakers

It was the 9th and final day of our climbing trip from hell, where we had almost run out of water in the remote desert. That final morning, it was time to get rid of anything we no longer needed, to shed any extra weight, because there would be water waiting at our truck only ten miles later. At the end of each day, I removed my heavy boots and enjoyed the luxury of a pair of lightweight sneakers where we’d camp. That final morning, I no longer needed them, so I made a hot fire and burned them.

I was delighted to see that in a short while, they burned down into a fine ash that blended perfectly with the ash from the wood fire. Like they had never even existed.

Too Close For Comfort

My wife Dottie and I had driven into an obscure mountain range in New Mexico, less than 5 miles from the Arizona line. We got there fairly late in the day and set up our tent hard by the old Carlisle Mine. My goal was to climb a couple of peaks to the west up Whiskey Creek. Early the next morning, I said goodbye to Dottie – she was not interested in those mountains and was going to stay in camp and get a little extra shut-eye. Hours later, when I returned, she told me that when she awoke and went outside the tent, she saw fresh mountain lion footprints in the snow all around the tent. The cat had walked completely around the tent, then left. The last bit of snow had melted by the time I got back so the prints were no longer visible, but her story freaked me out. Lions won’t hesitate to attack a human if they’ve a mind to, and the human can easily come out on the losing end of such a confrontation. Thank God the cat decided not to tear into the tent where she lay sleeping.

Tents

I became curious about how many nights I had spent in a tent. My climbing career started in 1962, and I kept really good diaries of my climbing activity. Recently I sat down and ploughed my way through all those records. There were a few years with little or no activity, but for the most part it was pretty consistent. The year is now 2024 as I write this, and I don’t think there’ll be any more tenting in my future. I was surprised, though, to come up with a total of 1,102 nights in a tent. That’s 3 years plus one week.

Cap Pistol

When I was a kid in the mid-1950s, we lived in Vancouver, BC. At that time, westerns were among the most popular shows on TV, and there were plenty of them. If you were one of the lucky kids, you owned a Davy Crocket coon-skin cap. But it was much easier to get your hands on a cap gun, or cap pistol. A pistol I had, but a coon-skin cap – not so much. My pistol looked like a revolver and was made of metal. It took a roll of red paper caps, and when you fired the gun, it made a loud bang accompanied by a bit of smoke. Inside the gun, the roll rotated to the next cap, ready to fire again. As I recall, there were plenty of duds, caps that didn’t fire. If you click on this link, it’ll tell you all about these toy guns. If you scroll down to the middle of the page, you can see a roll of red paper caps – that’s what I used in my gun.

Frozen Water Bottle

Many’s the time when winter climbing or sleeping at high altitude, I’d put my water bottle inside my sleeping bag for the night so my water wouldn’t freeze, yet often enough when I awoke it would be frozen. I had slept comfortably enough, warm throughout the night, but obviously my water bottle hadn’t. The only explanation I could figure out was that the bottle had spent the night off to the edge of the sleeping bag, next to the zipper, where there was little insulation.

Hungry Critter

I was a week into a stealth climbing trip out on the bombing range. One morning, before setting out to climb a major desert peak, I stashed some extra food and a bit of gear under some brush and marked the location with my GPS. There was no-one within many miles of my location, but I thought I’d cover it anyway. Hours later, I returned to the spot and was shocked to see the food I’d hidden was scattered over the ground. Upon closer inspection, I realized that only a package of raisins was missing. The critter that had taken it needed it more than I, and I was glad that it may have helped them out.