The Grouse Grind is literally a staircase directly up a mountain, from near sea level to 4000 feet elevation. As the path eroded they have put in stairs, to the point where there are very few sections without stairs now. It isn't a nice even staircase though, the stairs are made from logs and tree stumps and are anywhere from 2 inches to 2 feet tall. At many points it gets so steep that you can reach out and touch the stairs in front of you at chest height.
As the 1/4 mark first came into view we collapsed onto some nearby logs, heaving and sweating. A few of the people around us looked like they were having a tough time too, but many people breezed past us, a few even jogging. We pushed ourselves onward and the hike seemed to go by a bit faster. This was our first real hike in months so it took a little while to get back into it. It turned out to be a good warm up for hikes later on in the summer.
Somewhere between the 1/2 and 3/4 marks we stopped again for a break. As we were panting on the side of the trail trying to catch our breath, some kids not older than 8 ran by. We caught a bit of their conversation: "this is my fifth time going up! this is easy!" We theorized that Canadians breed their kids to be way tougher than Americans.
When we got to the top we felt a good sense of accomplishment and it was nice to see other people exhausted from the hike and know that we weren't the only ones. The view was nice, we could see over Vancouver to one side:
and some big mountains to the other side:
At the top of the mountain the remnants of a ski jump remained:
We finished the day with a delicious poutine meal.
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