Dude, Where's My Snowboard?: Grousin' around

We had one clear and sunny day on our last week as tourists and leapt on the opportunity to visit Grouse Mountain, one of the nearest places you can ski in the winter if you live in Vancouver. The whole place is floodlit, so you can don your skiwear and catch the bus after work for a good few hours of fun, if you’re that way inclined.

We caught a bus from Lonsdale Quay which took us all the way to the base of the mountain, where we clambered aboard a large cable car for the princely sum of $30.00 each which whisked us up the mountain in eight minutes flat. I must confess, at this point in the blog, that you can walk up… the hike is called ‘The Grind’ and it’s a hardcore slog for two hours if you’re not up to Paula Radcliffe standards. When we were sitting in the daylodge at the top, sipping on our lattes and munching on a gooey chocolate brownie each, we did feel a little guilty watching ultra-fit Vancouverites swank past in their athletic gear, all toned and tanned. Apparently it’s quite common for city folk to hike ‘The Grind’ of an evening as part of their fitness schedule.

We did do a little bit of walking ourselves, right to the summit of the mountain. It took us about forty minutes but there were still large areas of snow at the top, which made for interesting walking. It was also pretty strange to see the cold white stuff again after so long. I’d like to go back again in the future when the mountain is open for skiing as it seems like a great little hill.

We also stopped by the Grizzly Bear enclosure and got up close and personal with two teenage Grizzlies. Having seen the size of their claws, I’d hate to bump into one of these in the wild… It was a bit sad really as one of the bears was obviously very, very bored and kept pacing up and down the same bit of mud over and over again, even though the enclosure is very large. The bears are on the mountain as a tourist attraction as they were orphaned as cubs. If they hadn’t been taken in, they would have died, but there seems to be a bit of a debate going on about whether or not caging them was the right thing to do. They can’t be released now as if they bumped into a human, the consequences could be disastrous.

Needless to say, the highlight of the trip was the views – which were amazing. We stayed up there until it got dark so that we could see Vancouver by night, and the cable car ride down at 10pm was even better than the ride up, seeing the lights twinkling in the distance. Alas, by that stage we had taken so many photographs that the camera batteries ran out… doh!

Going up!