Goat Mountain hike

Last Sunday we hiked to Goat Mountain. We went with some friends, and lucked out on the weather as it was a gorgeous day. We started off early, meeting at the seabus at 9am, and then caught another bus to the base of Grouse. Then we took the SkyRide (a glorified cable car) to the top of Grouse where we started our hike from. In took us just over 2 hours from there to the peak of Goat Mountain, a distance of just over 5km and an increase of 250m in elevation, although the trail has lots of ups and downs. It's a great walk with some excellent views. There was a bear at the top too! It was our first encounter with a bear out in the open, and it was quite exciting. Previously, we have spotted them on Vancouver Island when travelling in the car, which is a bit different. We would have been more scared if the bear hadn't been a few metres below us, with no particularly easy route up to where we were. That gave us enough confidence to hang around for a few photos. After that we stopped for lunch on the way down, and then had a nice cold beer when we got back to Grouse Mountain, before returning home. Steph wasn't sure whether her feet would be up for the walk, as she gets pains in the nerves of her feet, but she managed it with no problems which was great. Perhaps we'll be okay to do more walking in future, because I really enjoy it. I've uploaded the photos to Flickr here. Also, as a special bonus, here's a movie I took of the panoramic view from the top of Goat Mountain.