VANCOUVER — Authorities are warning hard-core hikers to stop climbing the popular Grouse Grind trail on Grouse Mountain after search and rescue crews responded to an unfounded distress call amid an avalanche scare.
The avalanche reported to have happened around 10 a.m. Sunday at the three-quarter mark turned out to be a fallen tree. The hiker reported to be injured made it to the top on his own.
Still, a helicopter and 12-person search-and-rescue ground crew had to search the trail and authorities say the continued use of the closed hiking area by a small number of winter warriors is irresponsible.
A group of several hikers walked past crews in the lower portions of the trail Sunday afternoon, disregarding warnings to stop their ascent said Ken Juvik, who works for Metro Vancouver monitoring and caring for the trail for over a decade.
“It’s just unbelievable, and then the additional risk they transfer to the rescue responders and everybody else,” Juvik said.
“When the ice and snow start accumulating on the trail, it’s very steep, it’s very remote and there is potential for an avalanche to occur.”
Juvik — who works in collaboration with Grouse Mountain, the North Vancouver RCMP and North Shore Rescue — said the Grouse Grind may appear close to amenities at the top and bottom of the mountain, “but it’s that in-between area when you’re on the trail … you’re in a forested setting, very steep terrain and weather conditions changing very rapidly.”
People should not hike the trail, which has an elevation gain of 900 metres during the winter, North Shore Search and Rescue spokesman Tim Jones cautioned.
“There’s other alternative areas,” Jones said. “Grouse Mountain has a snowshoe grind in their own snowshoe park. And if people want to get that exercise, they should go up there in that well-managed area.”
The timing mechanism that registers serious grinders’ times is moved to the top of the snowshoe area in winter months so people can measure their time against the summer challenge.
An RCMP avalanche dog team was also en route to help in the search before the incidents were cleared up, Jones added.
Private company Talon Helicopters, based in Richmond, dispatched one aircraft to scour the mountain Sunday. The company bills B.C.’s Provincial Emergency Program, but not the search subject directly.
The cost for flying Talon’s helicopter is just under $2,900 an hour, said office assistant Jeanette Lim, who does the invoicing. Lim said she didn’t know how many hours were flown by the pilot Sunday.
In January 1999, an avalanche killed an Ontario man and prompted an almost five-month closure.
The Grouse Grind hearkens back to 1894, when hunters hiked up the mountain’s precipitous slopes and bagged a grouse. The first wave of hikers came in the 1920s and 1930s, as Vancouverites made their way to cabins in Grouse Mountain Village. Grouse Mountain is the site of an alpine ski area in the winter season overlooking Greater Vancouver.
Mountaineers Don MacPherson and Phil Severy cut the Grind out of the wilderness in 1981-83. They wanted a trail where they could get a good workout, yet ride down so they wouldn’t wreck their knees. The answer was to run the trail up to the Grouse gondola.
They also helped rebuild the trail between 1995 and 1997.
