Vancouver - part quatre

Waking up on our final full day in Vancouver, we see that it's greyer than it was yesterday. Bugger.
Our plan for today is to head up grouse mountain, and see the Capilano swing bridge.

Aimee and I get up nice and early anyway, and head out to our public transport. We buy a 2 zone ticket and catch the train one stop from Burrard st to the waterfront, then use the same ticket to board the seabus going across the harbour. Then we use the same ticket to board the bus on the other side which leaves shortly after the ferry arrives.

The bus winds its way through the lovely northern shores of Vancouver, dropping us to the bottom of Grouse mountain.
There is a 100 person cable car going to the top, but we are advised that the weather is very clouded in, and visibility is low.
Unfortunately for us, this is our only remaining opportunity to visit so we have to do it.
We board the cable car, and Neil from Yorkshire gives us the commentary as we go up the hill.
We take a look around, and eagerly check out the timing for the 'world famous lumberjack show'. We decide to have some lunch first, hot dogs and hamburgers. It turns out that visibility and rain is such that the lumberjack show has been called off for that session. This time we were prepared, so using my umbrella we take a look around the top of the mountain. We manage to spot the grizzly bears that are housed in the park. These bears were rescued from certain death as both had lost their mothers in separate incidents. Normally bear cubs cannot survive without their mothers and are put down. However a facility was setup on Grouse Mountain to see if these guys could be looked after, and so far it's been a great success. They are surviving well and have put on healthy weight. They even have been through a winter with their enclosure covered in snow and them in hibernation.

By the time 2:30 comes around, the mist has cleared enough, so we and the hundred or so other punters dry off seats for the lumberjack show. And what a show it was! They chopped logs with axes, cut logs with saws and had a log rolling contest (you know the one where they're both running on a log, just like in the cartoons).

So with Grouse mountain covered, we headed back to the bottom of the hill, and caught the bus back to the Capilano swing bridge. This is on the main road back to town, and was not affected by the weather.
The bridge was built over a 450 foot wide canyon back in 1889. It really is a swing bridge, it rocks back and forth with all the people walking on it, I saw a lot of people walking very uncertainly, holding on to the rails.
While it swings a lot, it has proven it's strength. Last year, back in november, a 46 ton, 300 year old Douglas fir tree lost it's hold on the sodden earth and fell onto the bridge, hitting it at approx 100kmh. The bridge held although the concrete mounts at the west end moved 2 metres.
The tree then had to be cut off in sections, otherwise if all the weight was lifted the bridge would spring up and catapault the poor guy holding the chainsaw 230 feet into the canyon below (apparently this actually happened with an earlier version of the bridge and the guy miraculously survived!). The swing bridge is not the original one from 1889, it's actually been replaced and rebuilt 4 times!

The walk across the bridge was only half the attraction. On the other side of the canyon is a series of paths allowing you to walk around the area. Most are at ground level, and you get a sense like it's a NZ bush walk, but there is also the treetop walk, which is a series of bridges joining the big trees. It allows you to walk above the ground, getting more of a 'birdseye' perspective on the forest and almost brings you up into the canopy of the trees. A truly amazing experience.
There is also the clifftop walk, where the paths lead out onto the edge of the cliff allowing you to look straight down into the river below.
This is a very well maintained and put together attraction and we'd reccomend it to anybody in Vancouver. Link


Exhausted, we made our way back to Vancouver and ate dinner at Red Robin. The burgers we had are probably the best we've had so far, rivaling the Kiwi fish and chip shop burgers, even getting close to the ones we make on the BBQ at home!