LITMIR.BIZ

      Weekends were for hiking and climbing. Don’s cabin on Dam Mountain served as a weekend retreat, but it wasn’t long until they contrived to live in the mountains. In the summer of 1923 local promoters who had purchased much of Grouse Mountain convinced Don and Phyl to partner in a venture to develop and open up Grouse for recreational use. In July, Don reported in the BCMC newsletter that beginning in August, a new trail up Grouse would be completed by “the interests who intend to place a hotel on the plateau.” This new route, which Don cut himself, began at the Lonsdale streetcar terminus, headed east to St. George Avenue, past a sawdust pile left over from an abandoned mill, along an old skid road up the open west slopes of Dome Mountain, to the trees at the edge of Mosquito Creek at 935 metres elevation. From here the new trail angled westward toward the end of the existing trail on the bare rocks overlooking the city and continued up above the east bank to the creek. It then zigzagged up the side of Grouse to the plateau. The trail boasted an easy gradient suitable for all foot traffic and for pack or saddle horses, the latter available for rent at trail-head from Don Munday. Don was also in charge of building a cabin, the first phase of the development before a chalet-style hotel was to be constructed. For this work, Don was to be paid five dollars a day.

      To be more accessible to the mountain, Don and Phyl moved from South Vancouver to North Vancouver, at 162 King’s Road West. It wasn’t long until they realized the days could be more productive if they just stayed up on the mountain during the heavy, tiring days of building the log cabin on the edge of the bluff of Grouse Plateau. They lived beside Grouse Lake in a large canvas tent complete with cook stove. The stovepipe angled up through a hole in the canvas roof. The tent bore a wooden sign that read Alpine Lodge, the name of the as yet unfinished cabin. From this tent Phyl ran a refreshment stand and served sandwiches and cool drinks to hikers.

      Many weeks went by as Don toiled. When the snow came, complications arose, not the least of which was living in a tent with baby Edith. The heavy snowfalls in the night meant that the Mundays had to set their alarm clock to wake them every hour, so they could get up and scrape the snow off the tent roof to prevent the whole thing from collapsing in. One night, Phyl woke with a start and put her hand up. The tent was practically right down on top of them! Hurriedly they put a wooden apple box over the sleeping Edith, in hope that it would give her air if the tent came down. With great care they squeezed out of the door and gently took the snow off in such a fashion that they did not leave the tent roof unevenly weighted.

      Phyl wrote an account of their experience for the Vancouver Province newspaper. “Don spent every daylight hour working on a substantial log cabin, while I sawed and chopped firewood, cooked the meals, took care of my baby, scraped snow off the tent (every hour) and helped Don between whiles. The middle of December came with the weather getting worse and the snow deeper, so we knew we must soon move under a solid roof, or be buried under the wreckage of our tent. Even with two friends to help us, the situation was fast becoming desperate unless the weather relented. Part of the cabin was roofed but lacked floor and windows, and the walls were still unchinked. We watched the sky anxiously… by night the mountaintop was enveloped in a raging blizzard. The heavily iced edges of the fly whipped and crashed against the roof of the tent till it seemed the canvas could stand the strain no longer… We worked all that night. The usual five minutes walk to the cabin now took half an hour or more with fifty-pound bundles of floor boards on our backs… The only light was a feeble electric torch… One man laid flooring and one packed it from the tent, while I alternatively helped with both jobs. The other man worked without rest shovelling snow from the tent where my baby was peacefully sleeping through it all.” By dawn enough flooring had been laid to bring in their supplies and furniture. They nailed the frozen canvas fly from their tent over the unwalled section of the cabin and then used the cabin door as a sled for the first load.

      “Edith thought that the wonderful world of snow must have been made purely for her own pleasure. She thoroughly enjoyed trip after trip from tent to cabin. Her joy relieved the strain on us, for we were all decidedly tired and the trips had to be made. By ten o’clock that night all the important things such as the stove, winter food supply, bedding, clothes and household equipment were safe under a solid roof.”