As a North Van resident I’ve always been a big fan of Grouse Mountain. Grouse is where I learned to snowboard, I’ve done snowshoe treks up there, and who doesn’t love trying to beat their personal best Grind time every year?
So when I was recently invited to participate in the first annual Unlimited Blogger Challenge (go vote for me!) I was pretty excited. I was asked to list off which activities at Grouse I would be most interested in doing. I’ve held an Annual Members pass before so I’d already seen many of the activities like the Birds in Motion, Lumberjack show and the grizzly bears. But last week I was pretty lucky to have been able to do some of the activities I never had a chance to experience before. It didn’t take more than a minute for me to pick 4 things I really wanted to do.
This is how my day at Grouse shook out!:
The day started off with the zip-lining tour. The group was small, being myself and a mother-daughter pair from Brazil. We put on our harnesses and helmets, got the safety briefing and walked out to the first of five zip-lines. We had two awesome, energetic and friendly guides named Lee and Megan.
The first line was relatively ho-hum; short and not very steep, but it was just a warm up. The second line took us down a big drop and picking up good speed (you can get up to 80km/hr on some of the lines) over the pond next to the grizzly bear enclosure. The ‘landing’ was actually pretty scary as you hit the spring loaded coils that bring you to a stop.
As I waited for other group members to take to their turn and as we walked between the lines, the guides did a great job of pointing out different interesting things about our surroundings and history of area.
The experience wasn’t short either. Its a full two-hours and lots of fun. My favorite line was probably the last one. You have a spectacular view of the surrounding mountains and valley as you jump from Dam Mountain and head back to Grouse, a full 200ft above the ground.
Flying in a helicopter is actually something that was on my bucket list, so I was really excited to go on a heli-tour. It didn’t disappoint. From the second the wings started turning and the helicopter started shaking it was pretty amazing. I could see everyone on the mountain stop and gaze at the loud machine as it lifted off the pad. It wasn’t more that a few dozen seconds before we were off and around the back side of the peak of Grouse, making our way to Crown Mountain.
I’ve hiked Crown Mountain before, but seeing it from above and so close was something else. It was like being in a Red Bull snowboarding movie watching the camera just zoom over the peaks. Unreal. But that was just the start.
We made our way over to one of most iconic landmarks of the North Vancouver mountain range, the Lions. Not only did we get an up-close-and-personal look at the Lions, but we actually flew in between them!
From there we flew around to Howe Sound, over Horseshoe Bay, to Wreck Beach and UBC, then east along over Kits before heading back over English Bay and the Lions Gate bridge to Grouse. (There are lots more pics of the heli tour and everything else here).
Below is a short video of the take-off and view of Crown Mountain. (You can only hear the noisy copter in the video, but during the flight your headphones muffle most of the noise and you can hear/speak with the pilot.)
The Eye of the Wind is the most prominent feature of the mountain as you gaze up on Grouse from the city. Completed in 2010, it is a “1.5 megawatt wind turbine of Leitwind LTW77-1500 type with 65 metres hub height and 76.8 metres rotor diameter at the peak of the resort. The facility, which is anticipated to eventually supply 25% of the resort’s electricity, is the first wind turbine built in North America in an extreme high altitude location. The design was recognised in the 2011 Consulting Engineers of British Columbia “Awards for Engineering Excellence” (Source: Wikipedia)
Full disclosure: I’m a bit of a sustainability geek so I was always a big fan of the turbine. To get up to the observation deck you take a 30 second not-for-the-claustrophobic elevator ride. Then, its pretty much as advertised; a 360 degree view around the Lower Mainland and the mountain range north of Grouse. It was pretty neat to get a good view of Coliseum Mountain and some other hikes in the area, as well as looking down on Vancouver on a clear day. Unfortunately, since it was a clear, calm day the turbine wasn’t moving. But it was still impressive to see the massive blades up close.
4) Paragliding
Last but not least, I got to go paragliding, which was hands-down my favorite activity of the day. I was expecting it to be pretty fun and a little bit of an adrenaline rush. Turns out it was TONS of fun and a BIG adrenaline rush.
I met my pilot at the top of the chairlift, we made our introductions, and then got down to business. I put on the harness, and watched as the pilot set out the canopy. Once the canopy was set out, we clipped our harnesses together, (‘ummm so two carabiners is all that’s gonna keep me alive here?’) and stood on the hill waiting for the right wind to come along, which actually took what seemed like an eternity (but I was glad not to rush). Finally I was ordered to jog forward down the hill, then sprint, and then… whoosh! We shot up off the hill and my stomach was in my throat.
We flew down around the Grouse chalet around to the south side of the mountain where the gondola is. This is where we rode the ‘thermals’. The pilot tried explained the physics of it all to me but I was a) to amazed by the view of the trees below and lower mainland beyond, and b) a little freaked out that we would suddenly plummet from the sky and/or crash into the other paraglider that was riding the same thermals as us.
I don’t know how else to describe it, it was amazing.
The video below shows the end of the flight where the pilot asked me if I liked roller coasters. I meekly answered ‘yes’ and held on as he proceeded to do ‘wing overs‘. You’ll see me close my eyes a few times, as I just couldn’t stand seeing the ground below swing around so wildly. I could actually see at times we were above the wings of canopy.
The rest of the video is us coming in for a landing on the soccer field beside Cleveland Dam. Its truly impressive how much control these guys have.
Needless to say it was a pretty awesome day! Grouse Mountain Annual Memberships go for $99 which gets you up the mountain to do a lot of cool things, and good discounts on the activities I did above. Definitely worth checking out, especially if you climb the Grind a few times each year.
Also, don’t forget to vote on the Unlimited Blogger Challenge page. You will be entered to win a zipline tour, Eye of the Wind tour, or annual membership!
