Birds, Grizzly Bears and Lumberjacks (Grouse Mountain ~ Canada)

 Late July

Many years ago we lived in Christchurch and one of the perks was being able to get to the nearby ski fields within a couple of hours in the weekend. For Vancouver it's similar but rather than a couple of hours it's 20 minutes.

In the summer shuttle buses run up to the mountains where various adventure sports (zip lining, abseiling etc) and shows are run. But the main attraction are two grizzly bears that were rescued as orphaned cubs and given a large enclosure I  which they can do things bears like to do - eat, scratch and have the occasional swim.

First show of the days for us was the flying of various predators - always fun as the birds have a mind of their own.

The national symbol of America - the bald eagle.

Kestrel

Turkey vulture with a face that only a mother could love.

Horned owl - inscrutable. 

The second show was the lumberjack show. Which was incredibly corny but at the same time fascinating and was played out as a competition between two lumberjacks (along with a very hyper mc) as historically competitions like this gave people bragging rights as to who was the best chopper, climber, log roller etc and was quite important.

Chop the top off the stump. First thing though is to get to it by cutting notches and stuff foot board in repeat a couple of times to get to the top.

Now this was impressive.  A 20m tall post and the aim was to climb to the top, ring the bell and climb back down again and the winner was whoever did it the fastest. This guy didn't so much as climb up and down as scamper up and not quite free fall down. Took maybe 5 to 10 seconds. 

These guys were the reason most people go up to the mountain in summer. Grinder and Coola. Both rescued in 2001 and now live in quite a large enclosure, complete with den for them to hibernate in winter.

Very cool.