Grouse Grind
I wanted to explore some of Vancouver and get away from the frustrations of the previous day, so I decided to spend the day at Grouse Mountain, and give the Grouse Grind a go. The Grouse Grind is a 1.8 mile hike up Grouse Mountain - a 2800 foot elevation gain to the 3700 foot summit, which, due to the elevation gain is mostly stairs - 2830 of them. It's truly a grind to get up. It doesn't offer a whole lot of scenic views, as it is mostly through the forested mountain side, but there are ample opportunities to talk to the other hikers along the way. The average time to complete is about 1.5 hours, with a record of just about 23 min. One person has completed over 1600 ascents, and on the day I hiked, a 70 year old man did it 3 times.
After going through the visitor center, I looked around for the trail, and ended up on a small trail that takes you to a timber wolf habitat. Unfortunately, I didn't see any of the wolves, but I know some were there, since the friends I met up top saw them. After locating the correct trail, and going back to my car for my hiking poles (not necessary, but I found them very helpful), I started the climb.
I was wearing jeans, a quick drying t-shirt, hiking boots, my DSLR, and my hydration backpack which had 3L of water, a few snacks, and some miscellaneous survival gear. I don't recommend hiking with this much weight strapped to you. If you are going to do this hike, you should wear shorts (athletic preferred, though cargo could help eliminate the backpack if you plan to stay up top for a while), a quick drying shirt, and light weight trail runners. Bring a water bottle, and try to bring nothing else. The less weight you carry, the easier it will be, but keep in mind, it was around 13*C (~55*F) up top, so you might be chilly up top if you find that sort of temperature too low. If you enjoy that temperature, you will find it refreshing after the grueling hike up. As I was equipped, and at my fitness level (which isn't great despite the number of hikes I've done throughout my trip), and with a number of breaks along the way, it took me just over 2 hours.
The only other way up the mountain is a gondola, which has a minimum cost of $40 Cn, including descent (descent only ticket for those that do the grind is $10 Cn). There are also other types of passes available for people that want to do ziplining, the Eye of the Wind - a massive windmill that has an observation deck, paragliding, helicopter tours, etc.
Lumberjack Show
The Lumberjack Show is a comedy lumberjack skills presentation that is free to anyone on top of the mountain. It puts two lumberjacks in head to head competition doing various lumberjack activities, like a three board springboard chop (lumberjacks have to cut notches in a tree to place platforms in it, so they can progress to the top in that fashion), axe throwing, a couple of saw competitions, 60 foot tree climb, log rolling, etc. They fill the show with many of the expected cracks on each other and their activities, and a pretty good looking hostess emcees the show. I was very happy that I made it to the top in about the perfect time to see the last show of the day.
Views of Mt. Baker
From the top of Grouse Mountain, you have great views all around you, including Vancouver, surrounding mountains, and even the mountains in the North Cascades of washington, including Mt. Baker. I had a half hour before the Birds in Motion show, so I went to a nice spot to look at these mountains for a little while.
Grizzly Bear Exhibit
After looking at the mountains, I walked over to the grizzly bear habitat, which houses two rescued grizzlys - Grinder and Coola. They were fun to watch, but by this time, the Birds in Motion Show had started, so I decided to come back to the bears after the show.
Birds in Motion Show
The Birds in Motion Show is another free show on top of the mountain, and features raptors from around the area (most of which can be found throughout the continent), including red tailed hawk, great horned owl, turkey vulture, and bald eagle. The host describes the birds and their differences while handlers encourage the birds to fly from perch to perch around the area so spectators can watch them in flight. It is much like other bird shows, but animals are always interesting to watch, and some of these birds aren't always shown in motion.
Met an Aussie and a Canadian at the Grizzlys
After the bird show, and taking a few close-ups of the bald eagle, I went back to the bear habitat. When I got there, it was feeding time, and the bears were making their way into their den to eat. I stayed around for a while, talking to some of the other people watching them and waiting for them to emerge. After a few minutes, their noisy eating stopped, and they did come out of the den, lapped up a long drink of water from a nearby pool, then proceeded around the side to a snow bank. The first one there - Grinder (the smaller of the two, but most dominant) found a nice comfy spot on the snow bank and sat down.
When Coola came around the corner, he checked out the spot, and seemed like he was going to go find one for himself, when Grinder decided to tease Coola by sticking his tongue out at him (something most people didn't see, but I have photographic evidence of). This started a little play fight, which Coola won, dethroning Grinder, though it didn't seem to matter much, since after the victory, they both started to walk around toward the top of the hill in their habitat.
Chair Lift
There is a road that can be walked to the top, but I had already decided not to bother with it, since I had done the grind, and it's a steep raod, but they weren't thinking about the road either - they were planning to take the chair lift, which operates year round, even when skiing isn't open, so people can go to the Eye of the Wind turbine. We walked around the corner to the lift entrence, and they pulled out their tickets, which didn't cover the chair lift, as they had the $40 basic ticket, and I hadn't bought any ticket yet, so none of us were ticketed to go. The ticket checker told us she didn't care about us not having tickets, and let us go up anyway.
At the top, we walked to the Eye of the Wind, hoping to bribe them into letting us go up, but they were shutting down for the day, so we just took in the nice views, and talked a little more. Here, I found out that they had met on a trip through Europe, encompassing 22 countries. I found out later that Canada is his 34th country, which is quite impressive to me. We headed back down the chair lift, and by this time it was around 7:30, and all of us were hungry (I had eaten an apple during the hike, two granola bars and a bunch of yogurt covered raisins during the lumberjack show to help recover energy, but hadn't had any real lunch), so we headed to the Peak Chalet.
Dinner With New Friends at Altitudes Bistro
Many of the restaurants were closed at this time, but the Altitudes Bistro was open, so we went up stairs to dine there. It was a very comfortable environment to dine in, and we talked at length about many different subjects while drinking beer and eating our sandwiches. While this is the type of place I often take pictures of, I normally haven't had the pleasure of dining with friends on this trip, so I have no pictures, but the salmon salad sandwich and seafood chowder (which cost an extra $1 as a substitution, which the waitress failed to mention - not a big deal, but probably would have gone with a different soup or salad instead), and the Whistler Powder Lager were all very tasty.
Gondola Down the Mountain
After eating, and talking for a while, it was time to leave. We headed to the gondola, where I was hoping I could buy a ticket down, but unfortunately they don't sell tickets there, so my new friends and I parted company as I went back inside the chalet to buy my gondola ticket. After a short wait, I boarded the next gondola, and headed back to my car, extremely satisfied with the day, and much happier with my second day's experience of Canada than my first.
Camped at Dogwood Campground in Surrey
I returned to the Dogwood Campground in Surrey (which didn't take as long to get to, since much of the construction around it's exit wasn't being done that night, though I did make the mistake of allowing my GPS to make me take a turn that forced me to go over the bridge an extra time. I spent a little while catching up with emails and downloading the pictures from my camera, then went to my campsite to go to sleep.
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