Grouse Grind, Cleveland Dam, Salmon & Lighthouse Park

I had an absolutely fabulous sleep. The first sleep where I haven’t woken up at all in the night. Wonderful. A very good night for it too as we were going on the Grouse Grind today, a hike with 2,800 steps and over 800 meters elevation gain. Sounds just great fun. To carb up for this adventure we added marshmallows to our bowls of porridge (and the customary massive dollop of peanut butter) which was definitely a good idea. As a warm up we headed to Cleveland Dam first. It’s a large dam, which was quite cool, and, as salmon can’t quite make the 70 metre jump up the dam, there’s a salmon hatchery to visit as well. It’s set in an excellent modernist, in-situ concrete building which I thoroughly enjoyed. A really nice surprise to see some excellent architecture once in a while, not that any of the other tourists seemed to be admiring it as much as me, the salmon stole its thunder somewhat. 

We optimistically bought a 3 hour car park ticket at Grouse Mountain, which we later came to regret. Well, not really regret, but let’s just say it would have been nice to have some more time. The hike was pretty dull, through a forest, and essentially just a massive staircase, both in length (height) and the size of the individual risers. Once at the top the view is potentially excellent. However a massive cloud was shrouding that so saw nothing. It’s saving grace was Grizzly bears. At last we saw some bears! They were in a sanctuary so slightly cheating but still, ticked that off the list. They have very large claws, and the advice we saw earlier on in the trip of allowing them to attack you for two minutes before fighting back seems laughable. The way back down was via a different route to our ascent as it was ‘too dangerous’ to go down the same trail. This one was pretty dangerous too and featured a very large variety of Amelia’s nemesis; tree roots. Amelia has had difficulty with tripping on tree roots throughout this trip, and I think this trail was her idea of hell. We eventually got back to the camper about 8 minutes after our ticket expired, fortunately there was no warden nearby so hopefully got away with that. 

Following this fun we headed over to Lighthouse Park via some very non-RV friendly roads and I made an absolute meal out of parking up a relatively steep hill (with very little help from Amelia). The view from this peninsula back to Vancouver is beautiful, especially in the afternoon with the sun going down at your back. A thoroughly wonderful spot. 

We are both absolutely shattered now after today’s exertions and very much looking forward to a foody day in downtown Vancouver tomorrow. Got to spend those left over dollars somehow.