Hiking up Grouse Mountain
Starting out 
Keep climbing 
Stairway to heaven?
A popular tourist attraction in North Vancouver is the hiking trail known as Grouse Grind, a steep walk up Grouse Mountain featuring a climb of about 850m and covering a distance of 2.9km to the top of trail. It is also a local past time to regularly do the Grouse Grind to keep fit and try to better your time for getting to the top.
So I decided to give it a go one morning along with a lot of other people and was thinking it would be similar to climbing Mt Warning back in Northern NSW, which I had done a couple of times. While I would consider myself reasonably fit, I haven’t done much hill walking of late and soon found myself puffing as I made my way up the steep incline with a million steps. The scenery was spectacular but it was hard to enjoy it while I was dripping sweat and silently cursing my decision to do the climb in the first place!
Are we there yet? 
Trees too tall to photograph 
Tree canopy 
Grouse Grind Trail 
Forest view 
More trees
I made it to the top in an 1 hour 15 minutes, which wasn’t too bad for my first attempt. Once my mind forgets about the pain, I will attempt it again and see if I can get closer to completing the Grind in an hour next time!
I highly recommend taking a change of clothes for when you reach the top as I was covered in sweat and it was cold at the top of the mountain. You also have to catch the gondola back down, which is packed full of people, so best not to be dripping all over everyone else!