Dave Orchard's Blog

Today my friends Sandy (sometimes known as Alex) and Bob and I decided to do the Grouse Grind. The grind, sometimes called "nature's stairmaster", is 900 metres of vertical and 2900 metres of horizontal. It starts at the bottom of the Grouse Mountain skyride and ends, well, at the top.

Just because it was raining like *crazy*, the top of the mountain has 3 metres of snow, and we all had colds was no detriment to see if we could: a) experience the mountain at it's worst and b) actually go up in the modern era and see *nobody* else on the trail.

Well, it turns out there was one other person on the trail. In my eight years of doing the grind, I have never gone up and seen nobody on the trail. In the summer time, there can be up to 5000 people in a day. It looks like a solid snake of people up the mountain.

But back to today. We were in solid water on the steps of the trail for 1/3 of the trail, then slush/water anywhere up to 3 inches deep till the half, and then heavy snow all the way to the top. As bad as it sounds, it was actually very enjoyable hiking in the snow. Though I could do without the dripping wet feet :-). We made sure in the areas that seemed avalance prone to separate. Next time I think we need a bit more gear.

Now one interesting thing about the hike was that it took us about 53 minutes from top to bottom. Not bad given multiple feet of snow... Though I was a bit disappointed it took us that long, as I've been doing the hike in the low 40's. It's interesting how things are all relative. I know folks that would kill to do the grind in 53 minutes, and then there's the record holder.

Urban Legend has it that he did it in 26 minutes after cycling the 80 kilometers in from White Rock. Now the records from earlier races aren't on the web but legend also has it that "he" is the 2003 Ironman champ. "he" could also be Derek Reed, who official results say did it in 27 minutes in '97. I'll have to talk to some more folks to find out the truth, I'm sure it's out there.

Now one thing I've noticed about triathletes - I made a bit of an attempt many years ago - is that they are all quite light. The prototypical triathlete is about 155 pounds and 5' 8". Well, I'm not. By close to 50 pounds. My friend Sandy and I have regularly done the grind, and we got talking about the relationship between weight and time. We both run about the same speed - we've done a few races against each other in the UBC endownment lands - yet we have quite different gg times. The day he corked a 38' 55", I did a 43'. We got thinking that there is probably a causal relationship between weight and height, given that hiking is simply (?) raising ones potential energy. We also talked about him weighing 10-15 pounds less than me.

Well, never to do things halfway, I tracked my weight and times this year. There is definitely a correlation. And there are some interesting curve fits that can be applied, from linear to exponential. There are of course other factors, like the amount of snow, and temperature. We found that temperatures over 20 degrees celsius had a seriously negative impact on time, so I also tried some temperature adjusting.

Here's the chart and fits that we came up with. It does predict that to get to a sub 40 minute time, I need to lose a few more pounds. And extrapolating way out based on the linear chart, it says I need to be about 165 pounds to be in the high 20's. Interesting to know the limits up front :-)

An interesting experiment and statistical analysis done in the first person. Not sure if I'll keep doing the data collection, but I do hope to keep hiking in the snow.