On our list of
touristy things to do in Vancouver was to visit Grouse Mountain. We thought that it was a lookout place – that
you’d get some good views over the city.
It is just up the road from where we are staying. Some of the brochures indicated that it had a
gondola to get you up there as well.
Given that there is some snow up high in the mountains surrounding
Vancouver, we wore our hiking boots just in case.
Wow! Grouse Mountain is a fully fledged ski resort
and it would have taken us about 30mins from leaving our door to being out on the
snow. When we first arrived, visibility
was a bit average. We could see the
chalet, but very little else. As this
had been another one of those mornings where we had stumbled out of bed and
gone exploring, the first stop was coffee.
As we were drinking our coffee (and note I didn’t say “enjoying”), the
cloud started to break up. In little
patches we were able to see Vancouver start to appear below. 
This inspired us to
get out and do something. As we weren’t
really dressed or interested in skiing / snowboarding, we went for the more
sedate snowshoeing. Or so we thought. After successfully tying the shoes on, we
started up their main trail. The weather
hadn’t really broken up the mountain, and it wasn’t long before we were in the
clouds. Still, it was lovely walking in
amongst the big trees in a very serene snowy setting. And then it started to go uphill. And while it went uphill, for us it was going
downhill. We were getting very warm. Too many layers, and way too much
unfitness. Still determination was taking
us on and fogging up our glasses at the same time. We came upon one path that led up to a wind
turbine. It was really steep. Unfortunately it was closed – the photo doesn’t
capture the steepness of it. So we had
to follow a path with a shallower gradient.
Until it went around a corner, and then that went steeply uphill too. We followed these for a bit further, but had
been snowshoeing for close to an hour by then.
As the top didn’t seem to be in sight, we turned around and headed back.
This is the bit that
they don’t put in the snowshoe manual.
While dragging yourself up a steep hill in the snow is hard work, trying
to walk in those dopey things down a hill is even trickier. The grippy bit is at the front of the shoe,
so heading down a hill and planting your heels just leads to your feet going
out from under you. It only took me
three times to work this out. And the two
cool things about wearing jeans are that they are cotton and get wet quite
quickly, with the second thing being that those pockets on your bum work as
snow shovels going down the hill and fill up with snow. Very cool.
Anyway, after that
adventure we went back to the Lodge and had some lunch. And I didn’t want to offend the locals by not
trying some of their local beers. The
weather started to clear and there were some amazing views. After sitting around for a while Siobhan and
I both concluded that we’ll be lucky to be able to walk tomorrow – we will have
so many aching muscles. Following lunch
we went on a sleigh ride around the area.
We got some good photos and met some more people from down-under. It was nice chatting with a couple of Aussie
girls and most of the staff at Grouse Mountain seemed to be from Australia or
NZ. We then watched a couple of movies
that they have continually showing. One
showed the establishment and development of the Grouse Mountain resort over the
years. The second was about a couple of
grizzly bears that they also have at the Lodge.
They are hibernating at present, but in a month of so they will emerge
and frolic around a few acres that they have set aside for them. They were rescued as cubs and seem to be
quite a hit here.
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