The Grouse Grind {my personal Hunger Games}

So I flew up that mountain, took a smiling picture, had a chat with bears and flew back down.

Sounds good but....SO not true.
Here we go with my personal Hunger Games.

We did the Grouse Mountain walk on Saturday. My host family had already told me about it and I was really looking forward to it! Well this is what I thought it would be like:

It looked all right. We had picked a day with wonderful weather (normally there are a lot of clouds around grouse mountain) and brought water and food. Optimistic people we were!

Ein bisschen Warten um der großen Gruppe ein Vorsprung zu geben...

-"What does it say?"

-"Well...I have actually no idea...I just took a picture"

^^'

And off we were.

It sure is amazing! We always had some squirrels at our side, you can't hear any cars or airplanes and due to all the trees it wasn't too hot. Though. After some time the only thing I saw was this:

Because that was when reality hit me:

This. was. the. most. MOST. exhausting. thing. I. ever. did. in. my. whole. life.

...just sayin'

Thank you Raphael for asking me every ten minutes if I'm still ok. Repeating it actually made me sort of believe I was alright. Almost...

At the end it took us 1:22 hours to go up. I don't think that this is bad at all. (My host family made it in 2:30) But just so you know: There are actually people who do this is 25 MINUTES!! 

Anyway we sure did arrive:

Important: Refill your bottle!

Enjoy the view

Look out for hiding bears

and cute deers (this one ran across our path...)

And we so did the walk down as well! 

And because this is what kept me alive the 1:22 hours (I imagined how it would be to actually write it down!!)

I survived the Grouse Grind!

We'll see if we do it again :D

and a sunset on my way back to say goodbye :)

So im nachhinein: Ich hab mal ein bisschen Recherche betrieben wikipedia aufgerufen. Die erste belegte Besteigung des Berges war wohl 1849. Insgesamt ist der Berg 1231 Meter hoch. Die Strecke die wir gelaufen sind (den Grouse Grind (to grind ist zermahlen/zerschleifen/abreiben...)) ist 2,9 km lang und hat eine Höhendifferenz von 853m!! (Also, ich weiß ja nicht. So imposant klingt es nicht...aber glaubt mir das ist es!!!!) Wer Interesse hat: Hier ist die Sommer Seite von Grouse Mountain in Englisch (Englisch bietet mehr Informationen). Hier seht ihr auch die schnellsten Zeiten und wer sie gelaufen ist und wie hoch wir waren und und und....

Ich versuche jetzt mal mich auf meinen tapferen Beinen in die Schule zu begeben ;) Ganz liebe Grüße