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Weekend on the North Shore
By ruth | January 9, 2008
[Originally blogged on www.powderrroom.net]
What with having Whistler season pass we haven’t been visiting the North Shore mountains much - having to pay for day tickets, pah! - but the weekend after Christmas we did some exploring.
Vancouver has three local ski hills on the North Shore - from West to East, Cypress Mountain, Grouse Mountain, and Mount Seymour. Grouse is the most ‘commercial’ I think - it has ice skating, snow limos, lots of touristy stuff and a big lodge. Cypress has the most terrain, especially now they’ve opened up a new side of the mountain with a new lift; and will be the site for the Olympic snowboarding in 2010. Seymour I know less about. That’s the next place to explore and report on…
We went to Grouse on Saturday, and were lucky to catch some of the good views before it clouded over - Grouse is known as the ‘Peak of Vancouver’ and I’ve seen spectacular shots of people in the air with the panorama of the city in the background. It was VERY busy and there was a huge line for the Skyride (big cable car from the car park to the mountain). Luckily, it being Canada not France, they don’t pack you in too tight in the cable car.
Grouse has two chairlifts, a magic carpet in the beginner area, and a couple of rope tows. The Screaming Eagle chair follows the straight line of the Cut, the big straight trail you can see from the city. It accesses mellow blues and greens which tend to get very busy but have the views. It also accesses the big terrain park (there’s a smaller one with rails in the central area of the mountain).
The Olympic Express goes up from Blackberry Bowl, and takes you to the top of some much more serious terrain - single and double black diamonds with names like Purgatory and Devil’s Advocate and the Outer Limits. They’re steep, bumpy and tree-lined - fun if that’s your thing, but unfortunately the weather closed right in and lack of visibility spoiled my enjoyment. A couple of bruising falls that winded me and aggravated old injuries didn’t help matters.
The chalet was heaving at lunchtime and finding somewhere to sit was a cut-throat business. Getting from the Olympic Express chair to the chalet or the Skyride was a real drag with lots of walking. The place didn’t really inspire me, and having been to, and enjoyed, Cypress Mountain much more the previous season even in rain and cloud, we don’t think we’ll be hurrying back to Grouse.
On Sunday we went to Cypress, on a much clearer, sunnier day. The line for lift tickets was huge, but well-managed; the parking lots were full way down the road.
The lodge, shop, ski school, rental building, ticket office and guest services are all at the base from which you choose between four chairlifts: the Eagle Express up Black Mountain; the Lions Express up Mount Strachan; the Midway chair that takes you half way up Mount Strachan; and the Easy Rider, which accesses the baby/ beginner slope. From the top of the Lions you can get the Sky Chair further up Strachan (when it’s open ); and from the top of the Eagle you can choose to ride down to the base again, or across to the newly opened area that’s served by the Raven Ridge chair.
The snow was unbelievably good, and deep, and fluffy; and the views were even better. From Strachan you can get views of Bowen Island, Howe Sound, and across to Vancouver Island. From Black Mountain you get panoramic views of Vancouver’s coastline, beyond Richmond and the airport and down past White Rock and into the States, and the snowy mountains of Vancouver Island in the background. I hope we get there on another clear day because like an idiot I forgot my camera.
It being one of the busiest weekends of the year, the lift lines were pretty brutal - except at Raven Ridge, so for most of the day we looped that, hardly ever going down the same way twice. The trees are mostly to closely packed to ride between without getting very stuck in the deep snow, although on Strachan there are (clearly visible from the base) some lovely pitches with well spaced, small trees just off the pistes. There’s a lot of terrain to explore, with something for everyone; some of the greens on Black Mountain were the perfect gradient for learning to snowboard. Some of the blacks were scarily steep and bumpy (but fun in the soft snow and good visibility), and others were less challenging. There’s a lot of terrain to explore, plenty of natural hits to the sides of the runs, and lots of space for everyone, even though it was very busy.
My only gripe is that, compared with Whistler, there were a lot of people skiing and snowboarding beyond the limits of their capabilities - too fast with too little control, and no awareness; people aren’t as courteous in the lift lines as at Whistler (though compared with France they are beyond polite); and less understanding of how other people use the mountain or the lifts (nearly every time we got off a chair, a skier would stick their poles down right in front of Dave’s snowboard).
One tip: bring a packed lunch - even at 2 o’clock, the line for food at the base was out of the door and round the corner. Wasted riding time.
All in all, for a local mountain, Cypress is astoundingly good, especially in current conditions. Riding the North Shore has both made me appreciate Whistler even more; and made me appreciate the joys of living in a city that has local ski hills. Seymour is yet to be explored, and I’m very much looking forward to it.
Tags: grouse, cypress, north shore, snowboarding, vancouver
Topics: /snow |