Goat Mountain - July 29 2023

North Vancouver Area, North Vancouver, BC
1401m

This TR picks up from Thunderbird Ridge, on my bike+hike trip up from Fromme around and through the Grouse resort. If you want to know how I got to this point, check out the previous TRs.

After departing from Thunderbird Ridge, it was a pretty short+simple walk up to the "Alpine Trail" that leads from the Grouse resort to the Goat peaks. There was an annoying 60m of gain that kinda just layered on to my general tiredness, but hey, at least I wasn't on the super-bushy Erik the Red trail anymore, at least.

From this fork to the "Little Goat Mountain" summit is a pretty short+simple 10-minute grunt, with only maybe 50m of elevation gain to be done. There aren't a ton of views up there, but hey, I'll take a "free" peak.

From Little Goat, it took my tired butt about half an hour to get to Goat, but a fresher body could definitely do it faster, there's only about 140m of elevation to gain up to it. There's 3 steep section on the trail up. First some roots that benefit from a little hands-on action, then a couple of chained sections. Those were a bit wet, so avoiding the chains took a little effort, but it was still relatively easy to do so for the masochists like myself out there. There were plenty of uncomfortable-looking hikers who seemed very pleased at their installation, though.

At the top, I met up with a guy who I'd been passing and being passed by since I got onto the Alpine Trail, and we had some more snacks up on the high point and chatted for about half an hour up there.

After hanging out for a while, I decided to continue enjoying my conversation and take it easy instead of pushing for the end of Goat Ridge before turning back. I could've probably done that and still made it back in a timely manner, but I figured this would give me a little buffer to maybe shower before dinner, and it's always nice to make new friends. So, me and Fearghal (the aforementioned summit buddy) did a little more exploring around the summit area, and started a casual walk back to Grouse.

The trail back is pretty simple, just an undulating ridge past Little Goat, Dam Mountain (which I bagged a couple winters ago learning how to snowshoe), and back into the resort terrain. After a little over an hour of walking back and chatting, we parted ways at the fork to the summit of Grouse, since I wanted to tag that before heading out. We exchanged contact info, and I started my final elevation gain of the day at around 4:20pm.

It was just around a 10 minute hike up to the top, aided by a shortcut I found that cut some distance out. Once I got up there, I found a road that led to various attractions to climber's left, and to the right, the top!

Once at the top, I confirmed that I, in fact, have visited the summit many times, as the top is literally the apex of the Olympic Express (formerly the Blueberry Chair). I took some photos at this very crowded summit and started my descent. I considered going down under the Peak Chair, but it was semi-roped off, there was nobody else doing so, and I didn't want any drama, so I just took the road down instead.

The way down was relatively uneventful. I went into one of the restaurants en-route to see if I could be persuaded to get a drink, but the prices scared me off pretty readily. Instead, I just followed a couple of deactivated roads/trails through an archery area, and connected with the maintained (if gated for vehicles) road I biked up. Thankfully, I managed to shave some distance off in the upper switchbacks by cutting down the grassy slopes, so I only had to walk a bit over 1.5km to get down to the bike.

From there, it was a simple bike down, although to be honest, it was kinda terrifying. I'm not the best cyclist in the world, I'm still recovering from major injury, and my bike was 75+ pounds with a heavy pack strapped to it. All that momentum hurtling down an unpaved road was kinda terrifying, so I rarely went faster than 30 km/h, and averaging about 20km/h. I don't know how the mountain bikers were going down the black diamond trails and not getting heart attacks, and that's coming from the guy who yeeted off a cliff skiing in the winter, and still peakbags.

Despite curtailing the trip w/ respect to Goat Ridge, I am still pretty happy with the day. I got 6 peaks down, found a fun way up Grouse without paying or tediously grinding up the BCMC or Grouse Grind trails, made a friend, and even had time to shower and grab dinner with my dad afterwards. 10/10 recommend this to people with bikes, especially ones w/ electricity to make the way up less tedious.

GPX Track + Map