100K Club -- cjb & Team Cat

High grey clouds and a little sun creeping through in the morning. Across Burrard Inlet on the Seabus, and by bus to Lynn Valley Mall (140m), then up Mountain Highway, which begins deceptively flatly from the 4-way intersection at the lights, then cranks up the incline (15%+) somewhere around Dempsey Road. Around the locked gate at the beginning of the old service road, and on up the Grouse Mountain Highway, a switchbacking dirt road that runs up Mount Fromme's southern slopes, contours into a pass between Fromme and Grouse, and finally scales Grouse's eastern flanks. Lots of Smithsonian erosion, the ditches full, and various sunken areas where last week's rains took out great chunks of roadbed, depositing them fifty or sixty feet away in lumpy, wood-and-gravel-conglomerate piles. Warm, more like May than January. Salmonberry bushes starting to push little bits of green bud out into the unseasonally moist air.

Dogleg up some nameless mountain bike trail, little cascades of water over polished teak-colored roots.

Water and nuts and a five minute break across from the gravel pit on the upper Grouse Mountain Highway. "I spy, with my shiny black eyes, something that looks like...money," says Rose T. Cat, glad to be sprung from the pack's top pocket. It's just a leaf, says jaded cjb. And then, reflecting: Damned if that leaf doesn't look like a soaking wet $5 bill half-in, half-out of the snow. Sho' nuff! In this way, Team Cat scores a free Skyride download.

Around the head of Mosquito Creek, floundering through knee-deep snow. Up the ploughed road on the Grouse Mountain side of the creek, under the chairlifts. That funny spinning noise the wheels in the towers make, like my Kitsilano grandma's clothesline singing in and out again.

The city spread out below.

Fog on the Fraser.

Sunset over Vancouver Island, grey sky, the last light leaking through.

Across the muddy Cut, lots of Japanese snowboarders and skiiers in evidence on the patchy slope.

Up the BCMC trail to the lodge (1111m), past two totally unconcerned mule deer cropping at the grass along the Cut's western edge.

Coffee in the lodge, a bustle of activity after the silent green forest.

Skyride down at twilight, the light running out of the day above Capilano Lake. Dark shadows under the trees, their green boughs passing silently by under the gondola, almost but not quite close enough to touch.

Traffic on Nancy Greene Way with its lights on.

Day's total, 971m.

Bellingham -- Mount Vernon -- Everett -- Seattle tomorrow. Back Thursday!

- posted by cjb @ 9:58 PM