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When the rock beneath Don Munday’s foot gave way, and he began to fall from his mountain perch, he imagined his life was ending, until he noticed one of his companions, Phyllis B. James of Vancouver, leaping after him. She was trying to catch him. Miraculously, both caught a foothold and climbed away from potential death — a brush with mortality Munday later regarded as the moment he met his true love.

Decades before insanely fit adrenaline-charged adventure seekers started pushing the limits of human possibility by suffering through multi-day desert races, free climbing office towers in Malaysia, running up — and down — Mt. Everest, and more, Canada was home to two of the original extreme-sport crazies. Their names were Don and Phyl Munday, a husband and wife team of mountaineering equals, at a time when most men didn’t view women as equals, and most women didn’t climb mountains.

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tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or The search for B.C.'s Mystery Mountain: Experts said it didn't exist — then Don and Phyllis Munday found it Back to video

The Mundays’ 1920s quest to find and climb Mystery Mountain captivated British Columbians. The fabled peak, in the Coast range about 350 kilometres north of Vancouver, lay in an uncharted part of the province; a great, big, glacier-white emptiness the Mundays bushwhacked into by compass. Dodging grizzlies, quicksand, avalanches, rockslides, fighting off hunger and felling trees to cross swollen rivers — all while hauling hundreds of kilograms of gear. Experts said the mountain didn’t exist. The Mundays went and proved them wrong. Mystery Mountain, known today as Mt. Waddington, stands 4,019 metres (13,186 feet); it is the highest peak in B.C.