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1937 - 2008

Gerta Louise Smythe (nee Heher) was born in Graz, Austria on December 11, 1937. She grew up in a time when the war made recreation activities difficult, however, her family enjoyed hiking in the local woods but their only form of transport was the bicycle. Gerta first discovered the mountains when she was eight. On a holiday to the Enns Valley where her uncle was the parish priest, his flock was happy to entertain his charming niece by taking her up to the Alps where the cattle were grazing and the cranberries needed picking.

At fourteen she joined the Oesterreichischer Alpenverein (Austrian Alpine Club) as she was impressed with their folkdances and singing. Her first climb with them was on the Ebenstein when she was fifteen. The party cycled for four hours, hiked up to the hut with torches and were awakened again by their leader in time to witness the sunrise from the summit, where the flowers were still partially covered by snow. Gerta admits she was "hooked for life!" She joined the club on other climbs: the Gesaeuse, the Grimming and the Gross Venediger but from all these summits her gaze was drawn to the tantalizing pyramid of Triglav to the south in what was then Yugoslavia. "What joy when I was able to climb this Slovenian peak in 2005 with my nephew. Transport is so easy now: everybody owns a car and the borders between many countries are nonexistent!" At the age of eighteen she introduced her father to the higher mountains of their home province of Styria and he continued to go there for many years even after Gerta moved to Canada.

Her climbing aspirations were thwarted when she started her nurses' training with the Red Cross in Graz. She seldom had free time on a weekend to join her friends so she learnt to climb some routes she had memorized on her own and by chance. Eventually she was invited to climb the South Face of the Dachstein (the highest mountain in her home province) and the Palavichini route on the Gross Glockner, the highest mountain in Austria.

Gerta finished her nurses training in 1959 and found a job in Vienna. Here she met a Canadian woman who gave her the telephone number of her husband in the Canadian Embassy. Within a month she was on her way to the Alberta prairies where she found herself wading through fields of crocuses in April 1960. This plant is rare in Austria and under protection but not so in Canada so she bought a pair of rubber boots and began visiting the farms in the vast neighbourhood where the fields were purple with their blooms.

Gerta found work at the local hospital in Hinton, a town fifty miles east of Jasper. Here she met Ken Smythe, an Australian who was working his way across Canada. His goal was to eventually reach Europe to see the 'Tour de France.' Gerta's plan at the time was to learn Spanish and then move on to South America because she loved the Spanish language. In 1961 they were married and the following year they moved to Jasper. Ken has yet to see this famous race and Gerta has given up learning to speak Spanish.

During her years in Jasper she managed to climb the East Ridge of Mount Edith Cavell and a face route on Mount Colin, both with Hans Schwarz, a Swiss guide, who carried wooden crosses onto both these special peaks.

While in the hospital, having her second son, a nun (the hospital was run by nuns) approached Gerta and asked if she would be able to work for her for four hours in the evening. "She was tired of working twelve hours every day and I was surprised that she expected me to work. I thought my job would be at home with the children now. I soon realized that it was a wonderful opportunity to combine two wonderful professions and I have never looked back." Gerta remembers taking one nun climbing up to Pyramid Mountain, a peak that looks down on the town of Jasper. "She was wearing her long black skirt and pinned it up with huge safety pins and was so happy to be able to have this adventure. It was not easy for me to leave this gem in the mountains where I had made many friends and even wrote little articles in the local paper about my mountain adventures."

In 1972 Ken and Gerta moved to Victoria where she felt lucky to find work that suited the activities of her growing family. She first found work at the Priory and then at a new Extended Care facility on Gorge Road and finally on the 'surgical floor' at Victoria General Hospital. Always cheerful, she was happy entering the ward in the morning and hoped to make a difference to somebody's suffering that day. Although long hours (twelve hour shifts) she always made sure to have her monthly free weekend to spend in the mountains. Gerta retired in 2000 leaving a professional vocation that she cherished all her working life.

In 1986 she saw an ad to "Climb the Golden Hinde." This was a sanctioned FMCBC trip led by Jim Rutter that would traverse Strathcona Park from the Elk River to Westmin at the southern end of Buttle Lake. Along the way she climbed the Golden Hinde. With the re-acquaintance of her love of mountains she soon joined the Vancouver Island section of the ACC and her first trip with the club was to Mount Regan with Rob Macdonald and Rick Eppler. In 1990 she saw Gil Parker's notice about a climbing trip to the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia in the USSR. Gerta summited Kazbek (5,047m) with Gil Parker, Sandy Briggs, Margaret and Ian Brown, Murrough O'Brien and Graham Maddocks. "This really was an epiphany: one whole month of no worries but climbing and meeting new people and climbing to the top of Kazbek, the seventh highest mountain in the Caucasus."

After returning from Georgia she realized with her ascent of the Golden Hinde in 1986 and Victoria Peak in 1988 she had climbed two of nine peaks that make up the Island Qualifier's or IQ's. By September 1995 she had completed her IQ's and on one of the peaks, Rugged Mountain, she had made the first winter ascent along with Sandy Briggs, Don Berryman and Dennis Manke.

Through the years Gerta has quietly plugged away at many of the islands peak making ascents of Mount Arrowsmith, Mariner Mountain, Mount Alava, Mount Splendour, Crown Mountain, Mount Tom Taylor and the MacKenzie Summit. Of this she wrote with tongue-in-cheek that her ascent "may well have been the first 'Grandmotherly Ascent'." Some of these remote summits have only seen a handful of ascents. However, she has also climbed Mount Adams, Mount Pugh and Mount Hood (on skis) in Washington and attempted Mount Rainer three times. In 1994 she joined John Pratt on one of his excursions to the Tantalus Range near Squamish with Judith Holm. In 1996 she climbed Wedge Mountain with a party of VI-ACC'ers and in 1997, with Claire Ebendinger, did a traverse in the North Stein near Pemberton. In 1998 she joined Reinhard Illner, and Ian and Margaret Brown on a trip to the Bugaboo's. Margaret and Ian Brown played a huge role in her mountaineering life and she followed them on their quest to the Island Qualifiers as well as ski trips to Mount Monday, the Manatees, the Waddington Glacier and the Assiniboine area. Several times Gerta and Margaret led their own traverses in the Olympic Mountains of Washington where they ascended Mount Seattle and Mount Carrie. She has shared many trips with Claire Ebendinger and spent a week in the Kokanee Mountains where they climbed just as many peaks from the Kokanee Hut as their younger friends, but taking slightly longer to do it. She also attended the 2007 summer camp at the Stanley Mitchell Hut where she again managed to climb many of the surrounding peaks with Jules Thompson and Roger Painter. However, her foremost mentor is Sandy Briggs. "Sandy doesn't know how to say 'no' when asked if I can come on one of his trips. One year I made strawberry jam for his birthday and all his twelve jars were labeled with the name of a mountain we had climbed over the last year."

In 1994 Gerta trekked in the Annapurna area in Nepal and in June 1997 she achieved her ambition of climbing a 6,000m peak, a goal for her sixtieth birthday. With several climbing friends she joined a guided expedition to the Cordillera Blanca of Peru which saw them first acclimatize in the Ishinca Valley where ascents were made of Nevada Uros and Ishinca, however, the climax of the trip was the ascent of Huascaran at 6,768m, the highest mountain in Peru.

Gerta was on the Executive Committee for the VI-ACC and represented Vancouver Island at the National Club. Since retiring from nursing, Gerta found more time to knit (another life long passion) and volunteered for the CRD as a warden of Mount Wells, a hill in her immediate vicinity near Langford in Victoria. There she would bring her grandchildren on her weekly hikes. Over the years, she has walked many of the hikes in the Greater Victoria area and the lower Island and was always happy to share these with newcomers to the area and club members. Sadly, Gerta watched the plants she loved so much bloom for the last time in the spring of 2008 as she passed away on June 19 at the age of seventy after her fight with bone cancer.

Sources:
Smythe, Gerta. Personal communication. 2007.

Brown, Margaret. "Victoria Peak." Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. (Fall 1988) Vol. 16:4. p. 10.

Hestler, Albert. "Overlord." Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. (Fall 1988) Vol. 16:4. p. 12.

Smyhte, Gerta. "Mt. Regan: Just like Austria." Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. (Fall 1988) Vol. 16:4. p. 5-6.

Smyhte, Gerta. "Mt. Sphinx." Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. (Fall 1989) Vol. 17:4. p. 4-5.

Eppler, Rick. "Mt. McGuire, the Little Lindeman that didn't." Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. (Fall 1989) Vol. 17:4. p. 5-6.

Smyhte, Gerta. "Spearhead Traverse." Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. (Fall 1989) Vol. 17:4. p. 6-7.

Macdonald, Rob. "Septimus - Exceptimus a Bit Crowded." Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. (Fall 1989) Vol. 17:4. p. 17.

Briggs, Sandy. "Caucasus Climb." Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. (Fall 1990) Vol. 18:4. p. 2-3.

Brown, Ian. "Alpine Club to Georgia." Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. (Fall 1990) Vol. 18:4. p. 3.

Smythe, Gerta. "McKenzie Peak." Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. (Fall 1991) Vol. 19:4. p. 33-34.

Berryman, Don. "Crown Mountain." Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. 1992. p. 10-12.

Turner, Charles. "Mariner Mountain." Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. 1992. p. 18.

Briggs, Sandy. "Alava Rebate, Please." Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. 1992. p. 21-22.

Illner, Reinhard. "Mt. Splendour." Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. 1993. p. 18-21.

Brown, Margaret. "Big Interior Mountain." Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. 1993. p. 37-38.

Matthews, Nigel. "Mt. Whymper, Northwest Ridge." Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. 1994. p. 5-6.

Smythe, Gerta. "My First Tantalus Trip." Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. 1994. p. 34-35.

Mathews, Nigel. "Mt. Harmston." Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. 1994. p. 36-37.

Moir, Russ. "Elkhorn." Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. 1995. p. 25.

Lepp, Gerhardt. "Warden Peak or Mr. Moose and the Tumbling Glacier." Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. 1995. p. 28.

Smythe, Gerta. "Nine Peaks in Nine Years!" Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. 1995. p. 31-33.

Illner, Reinhard. "Huascaran." Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. 1997. p. 49-51.

Illner, Reinhard. "On a Silver Platter: Bugaboo Spire, Northeast Ridge." Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. 1998. p. 34-36.

Baker, Barbara. "Traverse Cayoosh to Marriot Basin." Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. 1999. p. 36-37.

Jakobsen, Kaj. "Spearhead Traverse." Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. 1999. p. 37-38.

Smythe, Gerta. "Tom Taylor." Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. 2004. p. 37.

Smythe, Gerta. "My First GMC." Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. 2004. p. 50-51.

Zala, Cedric. "Sorcerer Lodge Trip." Island Bushwhacker Annual. The Alpine Club of Canada Vancouver Island section. 2006. p. 43-44.

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