I am becom­ing good friends with Envi­ron­ment Canada…especially on the few days lead­ing up to our Sunday runs. Weather for Sunday was mixed: 40% chance of show­ers in the morn­ing fol­lowed by rain in the after­noon. Good, I thought. Well, in the middle of the night, I woke up to pound­ing rain on my roof. Not so good, I thought. I tried to go back to sleep, but two words kept float­ing through my head: snow and mud.

Well, need­less to say, I was feel­ing some­what better when I left Deep Cove and drove to Grouse Moun­tain under an over­cast sky. A good crowd of about 60 people joined in at the park­ing lot for our good morn­ing greeting.

When it was men­tioned that Glenn had kindly and self­lessly ran up Moun­tain High­way with a back­pack and shovel to dig a route for us the day before, great cheers were heard. I told every­one he was too tired to make it for today’s run Kid­ding aside, I stressed that the road lead­ing to the top was indeed com­pletely clear of snow until the actual ski runs.

After remind­ing every­one to bring extra cloth­ing and a change of clothes for the ride down, we took off.

As expected, it was wet, muddy, and a little humid in the trail por­tion of our run. Lots of laugher and talk was heard. Once on the “road” we passed a few moun­tain bikers and dog walk­ers. We greeted snow just past the quarry and it steadily increased until I was look­ing up, way up. What a sight. Snow banks tow­ered along the sides of the road. But as Glen promised, no snow on the road.

When we got to the switch­backs on Grouse itself, we came around a corner and we saw just how deep the snow really was. The “road” stopped and we were sud­denly on the ski run. We scram­bled “up” until we reached the lodge.

The good thing? Well, my shoes were very clean…unlike the muddy runs of the past. The legs still looked like they crossed over a few mud pud­dles though.

Hope every­one had a great run, and have a good week. Remem­ber to recover as our mileage is start­ing to bump up. Hydra­tion is impor­tant, during train­ing as well as through­out the day, espe­cially now that the weather is warm­ing up (well, that’s what Envi­ron­ment Canada said!).

Patri­cia Jensen
Run Leader