Crown, Little Goat & Dam

Today Sean and I decided to do Hanes Valley and bag a few peaks along the way. All I can say, what an epic day. Our day started with us meeting at the bottom of Grouse Mountain at 7AM. We left Sean's vehicle there and I drove Sean & Nani to Lynn Headwaters to start our day. We had no where to be so we had all the time in the world to get back. We made a steady and decent pace all the way up pass Norvan Fall and found the turn off for Hanes Valley without any trouble. From there we had to cross the “Bridge of Death” and I learned why it is called that, it was a scary crossing. After the bridge crossing, I made a bit of a wrong turn and lead us off the trail a bit, but only a bit. We easily made our way back to the trail and all the way to the North Shore Search & Rescue helicopter landing spot.

 

 

 

 

 

The easy part of our day ended here, now we had to navigate a climb with a builder field and a scared Nani. Although at times Nani showed the bipeds up. We did here some voices about half way up the climb to Crown's turn off but never saw anyone until we were almost at Crown's peak. 

 

Once we got to the turn off for Crown Mountain, we were in for a surprise. The trail was very steep in sections with a lot of technical and more boulder field fun :) Mother Nature decided to make things much more interesting by adding rain with winds just to add some challenge to the climb. Because who would want to make things easier, right? Although we had a beautiful view of the clouds surrounding us, we determined that Crown will need to be repeated on a sunny day. 

From Crown we decided to to head back to Grouse since the views were lost and we were soaked to the bone, but as we passed by Little Goat Mountain, we had to bag it since it was only 50m off the trail and really what is 50m. Nothing. From there we were knackered heading back we saw the zip line for Grouse. Nani was showered with attention. We were hoping that we would be offered a free ride back to Grouse along the line but sadly no one offered so we trekked until we saw a sign for Dam Mountain, 500m. We looked at each other and knew with Dam only 500m away, how could we not bag Dam :) Besides the weather had improved to just cloudy so with the great weather blessed upon us by Mother Nature we bagged Dam also.

With Hanes Valley, Crown, Little Goat & Dam taken care of we headed towards the Grouse chalet to head back towards the car. Getting into the commercial area that is know as Grouse we spotted an outdoor BBQ, by now we were craving a hot meal. We order our food and the gods smiled down on us, their cash register was down. The chef behind the BBQ said, "on the house". We thanked the chef and sat down in the "chair of death" to eat our warm meal. After eating we made our way down the BCMC, by the time Nani got to the car, she was done and quite for the ride back to pick up my ride. Not a bad way to spend a day, about 27k, 10.5 hours and "some" elevation change. 

Now I'm off to bed to dream up where I'll end up tomorrow. See you on the trails.