These Are The Days: Grouse Mountain

On our first full day in Vancouver, we headed over to Grouse Mountain. Matt had been to Vancouver a few years ago when he was doing his fellowship in Ohio and a group of them had climbed Grouse Mountain. Immediately when he got back from that trip, he was telling me how much I would love doing it someday. Little did we know that someday would come so soon, thanks to Rob and Lindsay inviting us to join them out west!

Vancouver has great public transportation and virtually everything had a free shuttle out of the city, so we took the subway over to the seawall and then boarded the 15-min. shuttle to the mountain.

Inside the beautiful subway station--for being a big city, Vancouver was incredibly clean and beautiful. You don't see many subway stations like this around the states! Check out those columns and the intricate ceiling!

A common scene on our trip....Lindsay and Matt reading the map and figuring out which we needed to go. Not sure who was right this time.

Familiar scenes from when Vancouver hosted the Olympics...too bad it was foggy that morning..

Grouse Mountain is filled with all kinds of 'touristy' stuff to do, but the Grouse Grind, as it's called, is not one of them. It's referred to by locals as Mother Nature's Stairmaster and it's a 2 mile hike virtually straight up to 3,700 feet. You can see the sign in front of us at the bottom of the mountain that says "grind timer". This is where the timing starts on your chip and then ends at the top. Apparently there are people who do this for a workout and the fastest times are around 30minutes....yes, 30 minutes of climbing 2 miles up steps that are high as your thighs!! We took our time and paused to enjoy the views along the way, finishing in just over an hour. But it would be awesome to live out there and get to do this a few times a week as a workout!

(Click here for a better picture from the Grouse Mtn. website)

This was on one of the easier stretches where running would be easy to do...

We made it!!!! Just as the clouds were breaking up and we could see the city of Vancouver below.

I had to take this picture of a guy who clearly just finished the grind and felt either (1) comfortable enough to sprawl out on a rock right at the top or (2) too exhausted to move another step or to care what anyone thought. Hilarious.

A few more shots of the city..

We ate lunch at the top of the mountain and then headed over to do some ziplining. I have to say that we were all really excited to do this since it was a first time for all of us! When we were getting into our gear, the guide asked us if we had just done "The Grind" (most people were wearing nicer clothes and we were all in our workout gear). When I said, "Yeah! Do you do it much?"

He quickly replied, "I did it once. But then I looked over and saw there is a tram that you can take that goes all the way to the top as well!"

Apparently the locals don't share the passion for the 'grind' as I assume I would if I lived there!

Our first zipline...pretty tame.

They got progressively more thrilling as they went. This one was by far our favorite....it went between two mountain peaks and the views were just breathtaking. Lindsay took a video on her camera on this one that I included at the bottom of the post, which gives a slightly better view (although it seems much slower in the video that in real life!)

Going off into the clouds....It was a bit crazy when we couldn't see where we were going to end up until we were in the middle of the line....but it was amazing to watch the clouds move as we went.