As orange as always

Last Thursday and Friday we had lovely weather, and Chrissi had her two days off – we had a nice time of it!  On Thursday we went down to the beach just below Burrard bridge, had a burger at a promenade vendor, sat in the sand and took photos for my film project (more on that soon – ahaaa!), had some ice-cream, and just enjoyed the sunshine, beach and view – Vancouver really is a beautiful place when the sun is shining!

On Friday we had breakfast on the balcony it was so warm!  Just above Chrissi’s head, the humming bird came to feed while we were eating – amazing hearing her like a big bumble bee so close!  Around lunch time we got going and took the sea bus across to North Vancouver, and then the connecting bus up to Grouse Mountain.  We were planning on doing the Grouse Grind, but the entrance was closed… they hadn’t opened it after the winter season yet!  A local showed us the way around the fence though, and gave us the tip that the BCMC trail goes to the top too, but isn’t as grueling as the Grouse Grind (which is a pretty straight set of steps climbing the ~800m up – athletic people can make it in about 40 minutes).  We took an even longer route a good way around the mountain, and in a comfortable 2.5 hours got up to the top of the gondola station – the last quarter of the way was still under at leat a meter of snow!  With the ski season just over, and the hiking season not quite opened it was pretty quiet there, and we enjoyed a burger and chips with a glorious view out to sea in the sunshine.  Before we got the lift down (it’s only $5CAD down!) we went for a walk around the top, followed some signs for the “Bears”, and indeed found two Grizzly Bears in an enclosure.  We joined in the handful of Japanese and Mexican tourists snapping shots of the captive bears – they spent the time lazily fighting each other – a bite here, a tug there, but nothing too energetic!  I did feel bad seeing them in such a confined space (though in the summer they are being moved to a 5 acre plot), but on the other hand, it’s probably the only time I’ll get to be that close (and not be pissing myself) to a bear, and while not exactly free, they were in their native environment, and had just had their natural winter sleep.

Tags: bears, Hiking, Vancouver

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 23:36 and is filed under By Robin, Hiking, Travel, Vancouver. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.