Tuesday June 27, 2006
Hikers: Jodie, Pat
Weather: 70s, Clear, Slightly Hazy
Miles: 4.0
Elevation Gain: 3000 ft
Duration: 3.5 hrs
Grouse Mountain is a popular tourist peak and ski area. It has a tram to the top and a visitor center at top and bottom. The tram and visitor’s center aren’t on the true summit, but close. We took buses all the way to Grouse Mountain from our hotel. Vancouver has a good public transit system.
Jodie and I began our climb up the Grouse Grind Trail around 10:00am. The trail was a heavily used series of steps that climbed steeply up the mountain. We found out later that the trail climbs 2800ft in 1.8 miles. It did not take about 40 minutes as a hiker told us the previous day, but about an hour and 15 minutes. It was almost a stressful hike because there were so many people hiking up the trail. It was a constant stream of people, not back to back, but within 50 feet of each other. At the top, we found out there is a way to time yourself up the trail. Most people we saw didn’t carry anything with them except maybe some water; it appeared that many of them were doing the trail solely for exercise. The fastest time of the day so far was 42 minutes and the fastest female all year was 39 minutes, so the hiker who told us it was about 40 minutes was clearly underestimating the time.
The true summit is a few hundred feet above the tourist area. We hiked up a steep dirt road to make it official. The views of Vancouver were much better from the true summit anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment