Since my parents are in town I decided to take dad for a nice leisurely walk… up The Grouse Grind! For those of you who don’t know, The Grind is a hiking trail that goes up Grouse Mountain almost vertically and is located about 20 minutes from downtown Vancouver. The trail itself is about 2.9 kilometres and has a vertical elevation of about 853 metres. Once you reach the peak of the mountain you can catch the gondola back down the mountain. For a fit person it takes about 1-2 hours and the course record is 26 minutes and 19 seconds!! I would consider myself quite fit, but this trail is definitely not for the faint of heart… or the unfit… as we soon found out! At about the 220 metre elevation mark dad threw in the towel because he was feeling out of breath. Rather than continue and have to turn back and trek down the mountain we turned back at that point. It was still a good achievement on his part because it translates to about the equivalent of climbing up a 75 storey building.

Two things to consider when planning to do the grind:

1. Newton’s law of physics: What goes up must come down… This is true, but I’m sure he didn’t account for staircases being in the way!

2. Plan on going early in the morning before the heat sets in and also you won’t spend the entire time with your face in someone bum because there won’t be as many people.

 

Before the summer is up I’ll tackle this beast and I’ll let you know what the view is like from the top… heck… if I’m a glutton for punishment I’ll try and do it every week! But let’s not many any promises…! Maybe I’ll just use the gondola…