Grouse Mountain.

Vancouver welcomed us with day-after-day-after-day of rain in our first week here (just standard west coast life I guess). Just as I thought it would never end, on the Friday of that week we were gifted with a beautifully sunny day to break up the grey. We spontaneously decided to head to the mountains to make the most of it, and paid our first visit to Grouse Mountain.

Keeping in theme with our week of firsts, we hired out snowshoes to explore the trails. As both of us have leg injuries, we can't ski, snowboard or ice skate, so snowshoeing or hiking will be the way for us to explore the mountains. On Grouse, we spent most of our time on the Light Walk, which was a pretty easy and short circuit, but one that took us about an hour simply because I kept stopping to take photos. As the name suggests, this trail was full of light displays (and was probably meant for a romantic evening walk/first date material). It made us feel like we were in a fairytale, but you'll note I haven't put too many photos of the lights here seeing as they were harder to capture in the daytime. Perhaps next time we'll stay for dusk to truly enjoy the Light Walk, and maybe even do some tobogganing or explore the longer trails.

In the summer, when all this snow melts, some people do the Grouse Grind. With a 2.9-km (1.8-mile) ascent and an elevation gain of 853 metres (2,800 feet), it's not for the faint-hearted (and I don't just mean metaphorically-speaking).