Snippets from the Brodies: Back to Vancouver

Well, back in Vancouver again! And once again, not for long enough! It was great to catch up with Ben & Anna again, and little Finley! We planned to only stay there for one night before heading east towards the Canadian Rockies, but of course that quickly migrated into 2 nights…

From the ferry terminal we headed to the nearest Starbucks to find some free internet, and found that regardless of the cloud covered mountains, it would be more worth heading up Grouse Mountain that day than any other!

On the way over to Grouse Mountain we drove through a little bit of Stanley Park (as Central Park is to New York city), and saw a scary number of bike riders, including a few tandem bikes and bike trailers for kids, and checked out a few totem poles in a rather crowded area of the park – they were pretty cool!

Floating log storage in Vancouver

BC Place Stadium in Vancouver, as we drove past

Some of the Vancouver skyline, from Stanley Park

Some of the totem poles in Stanley Park

So we decided to do the Grouse Grind, which made me realise just how awfully unfit I was, after 2.5 months of doing virtually nothing energetic! The Grouse Grind is a very steep walk up the mountain to the ski field area at the top, rather than catching the aerial tramway/gondola. It is only about 3km, although it definitely felt that long already when only ¼ of the way through… It goes up by nearly 1km in that distance, and is almost entirely stairs – apparently over 2800 stairs. They have a yearly race up here, and people buy timers during the year to track themselves – the record is just over 23 minutes, but we (well, me, with Lawrie waiting for me…) took about 1.5 hours). We also discovered just how humid it was, and it started raining, but looking back it was definitely worth it J (definitely wasn’t so sure about it at the time though!). After drying off a little, and as the clouds set in to stay at the top, we realised just how inadequately dressed for the weather we were (a rain jacket doesn’t really cut it when it feels like it’s going to snow!).

Nicole getting ground out by the Grouse Grind

Looking up part of the Grouse Grind

There are some pretty awesome things to see at the top of Grouse Mountain – it’s one of the 3 local ski fields in winter, but definitely a big tourist attraction in summer too – on a nice day you can see most of Vancouver city from the top, and so there are helicopter rides from there, mountain zip lines, a massive windmill at the top that you can go up into (all for an extra cost of course), and then a few free things which we did:

A birds of prey show, where we saw up close some pretty cool birds – a 1 year old bald eagle (only the adults have a white head, after about 5 years, so this one was speckly and brown) with a 6 foot wingspan; 2 hawks (where the females direct the males to do the hunting for them, and they have a super impressive dive to get the prey. One of the hawks flew up and up, and up… and didn’t come back, so we were warned to call out if we saw it, to protect the next birds in the show… And the other flew really fast between the heads of people in the show audience, a little too close for comfort!); a falcon, which put on some impressive flying speed (they get up to 300km/h, which is crazy!) chasing after a fake bird the trainer was holding; and a great horned owl, which was really cute but not quite so impressive, apart from its hearing and eyesight J

Massive young bald eagle

Bald eagle

Hawk

Great horned owl

Falcon

We checked out the grizzly bear wildlife refuge, where they keep 2 fully grown (need I say GIGANTIC?!) grizzlies that they rescued as orphaned cubs – at first they were just sleeping hiding in the woods, but then we saw them up really close, which was very exciting!! They. Were. Massive. As were their claws…

First sighting of the grizzly bears at Grouse Mountain - thankfully it improved from here!

One of the grizzlies finally surfaced :)

Grinder and Coola

Do not mess with the grizzlies...

Then there was a lumberjack show, which although a little over the top, was hilarious, and worth every moment – also pretty impressive in terms of skills!

Kiwi lumberjack

Axe throwing

Chainsaw carving

Not sure what it was called, but very impressive and quick climbing!

Log rolling

We went to check out the wolves in the wildlife refuge at the base of the mountain, but it seems they didn’t want to see us, and were more interested in sleeping. The people there before us waited a while until one walked past, so we stayed around in hope, but after far too long, Lawrie finally spotted a white wolf sleeping in the woods, and that was the best we got – others said they’re usually walking around and even fighting, right next to the fences, so that was a little disappointing!

Spot the wolf... Thankfully Lawrie did :)

Zoomed in view of the sleeping white wolf

Transport down the mountain - they fit 100 people in there...

We spent some more time adoring Finley back at Ben & Anna’s, and while they went to see the Musical Ride show put on by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (Mounties), we didn’t get tickets in advance so took a walk and saw them practising on their matching horses instead!