Have you ever had unfinished business with a destination?
I have. I did. With Vancouver.
I lived there from 2008 to 2010, and I left before I was ready to say goodbye. There were a bunch of reasons for this, namely that it took forever to feel settled – as in, I didn’t feel like I had a life there until a couple of months before leaving. By that time, we’d booked our flights and made unchangeable plans, and that ship had sailed, so to speak.
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Since then – so for eight years – I’ve felt like there was more for me in Vancouver. I’ve visited once in that time, and the one thing I really wanted to do – hiking the Grouse Grind – wasn’t possible, as the trail was closed while we were there.
I don’t know why I’ve clung so much to the Grind. Maybe because it’s one of the first truly local things I did when I first moved to Vancouver. Maybe because the first time I did it, I thought I was going to die (see picture above – on the left is me at the start, feeling optimistic. The photo on the right is not even a quarter up).
This hike is serious. They call it Mother Nature’s Stairmaster, and they’re not kidding.
What is Grouse Grind?
The trail is only 2.9km long, but it’s made up of 2,830 stairs that go almost vertically up the side of Grouse Mountain, with an elevation gain of 2,800 feet. To give you an idea of what that looks like, according to my health app, it’s the equivalent of 236 floors.
I wasn’t expecting it to be so hard – like, at all – the first time I did it, back in the late summer of 2008. By the time I left Vancouver, I’d conquered this popular trail a number of times, but I’d never cracked the magical time of an hour. My best time, as of 2010, was one hour and one minute. It killed me, you guys.
Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t the sum total of my unfinished business in Vancouver, but in some weird way, it represented it somehow.
And so, this hike up the side of a Vancouver mountain beckoned, and when we visited again last month, over eight years since we left, I was determined to do it again. And I had my heart set on finishing in under an hour.
Hiking the Grouse Grind in Summer
So here we were, back in Vancouver again, visiting for a friend’s wedding. It felt like a reunion of sorts: with friends, of course, but also with the city. Except…the city, it seemed, wasn’t all that keen to see us.
Luck was not on our side during this visit. The day we arrived, smoke from British Columbia’s extensive forest fires descended on the city. A few hours after we left, it lifted. So in our week in Vancouver, we didn’t see a mountain once. We kept waiting for the right day to do the Grind, but it got to our last possible opportunity, and the smoke was still thick, completely shrouding the mountains and clouding our lungs.
But this was our only opportunity. So we woke up, drove over Second Narrows Bridge to the North Shore, up past Capilano Suspension Bridge, and into the Grouse Mountain car park. It was empty. A few locals were around to do the hike, but even they knew it was the wrong day for it.
“We must be crazy doing this today,” one man said as we prepared to begin. I nodded in agreement, but I was optimistic.
After all, I’d done this before. I could do it. Plus, since leaving Vancouver I’ve run half marathons, I’ve joined (and subsequently quit) gyms…I was in a much better place than I ever had been before. The fact that it had been over eight years since I’d done it, and that the sky was thick with smoke, was irrelevant.
Lol.
How hard is the Grouse Grind?
It’s bloody difficult!
It’s easy to forget, but my goodness! The first quarter is definitely the hardest. I think because it’s the longest, distance-wise. It seems to take forever – like, for flipping ever – to reach that 1/4 mark sign. I definitely began to wonder if the sign had been removed and I was actually almost halfway up, but no – it’s just…it’s hard, you guys!
Anyway, 1/4 mark reached, it all became a bit easier from there. And by easier, I mean it was horribly challenging, physically. But mentally, once I’d got past that first quarter I was in much better shape to keep going. And once I got into a groove, and just kept moving, I knew I could do it. Just. Keep. Going.
And keep going I did. Sure, breathing was hard. And I couldn’t see any of the stunning views that usually offer a snippet of reward, flashes of a reminder of what’s to come at the top. We didn’t have any of that, so we had to keep going, knowing that our reward at the end wouldn’t be views, but the satisfaction of finishing it.
I stepped, and I climbed, and I huffed and puffed, and I sweated, and I was awe-struck by the gorgeous trees and the golden light that was filtering through the smoke.
And then, finally, finally, there it was: the end.
What’s at the top of the Grouse Grind?
I grabbed a coconut water at the cafe at the top and stretched for a few minutes. And then, before getting the gondola down, we went for a little stroll to explore Grouse Mountain.
Usually, the view is one of the main drawcards of Grouse, but we couldn’t see anything at all. So we strolled over to the bear habitat and waved hello to Grinder and Coola, the orphaned Grizzlies that have been there since we lived in the city. We walked past the lumberjack show and the bird demonstration, and then we were ready to go.
We were slightly shocked that the price of a download ticket is now $15 (up from $5 back in the day), which does make this a rather more expensive hike than most – especially considering that you’re not actually allowed to hike down the mountain – but we grabbed two tickets and enjoyed a much faster journey down than on the way up.
In the end, I didn’t time my climb. But I know for sure that I didn’t finish it in under an hour.
Grouse Grind defeated me yet again. That personal best still taunts me.
So that unfinished business? Yeah…I think Vancouver and I are going to meet again.
And in the meantime, I’m gonna start working on my squats.
Note: always check the trail conditions and opening times before attempting to hike the Grouse Grind. And stay hydrated!
