Journ Article

The Gondola up to Grouse Mountain swung back and forth as it rolled over the support beams, eliciting a mixture of laughter and quiet screams from the dozens of passengers. My girlfriend’s fingers threaded through mine as we rose higher, staring down at the tops of evergreen trees and patches of exposed rocks. I could smell the air through the gondola’s windows. The mountain air in Vancouver has this refreshing quality to it; different from anything else I’ve ever taken in. The gondola jostled and swung again as we rolled over the last support tower, and once again, the people around us gasped and giggled. The roar of voices grew louder as we pulled into the station atop the mountain, and everyone surged towards the door.

They had written at the base that the Visibility was 100 per cent. It was immediately evident as I stepped off the Gondola that this figure was slightly off – we stood there and looked straight into a wall of soft, gray mist. We struggled to see the path ahead as we wandered through this great cloud, this icy cool mist parting as we drew closer to it.

It seemed almost like we were the punch line to some cruel joke. Gone up this mountain to see this supposedly spectacular view of Vancouver, we found ourselves face to face with the purest form of nothingness I’ve ever seen nature produce. It was cold, but not uncomfortable. We wandered up the paths and looked at the chainsaw carvings, intricately made, beautiful, and like everything else on that day, shrouded.

There’s a chairlift to the summit. Best view of Vancouver, they said. Nobody was bothering with it on the day – there was nothing to see, but we boarded anyway. And now even the ground was mist, soft and thick. The cold became bitter as we got higher, and we huddled close to one another. I looked at her, and the chair we shared, and at that moment, there was nothing else to the universe – just us, high above everything in the midst of a soft cloud, swinging slowly on our chairlift in the bitter cold.

The ride came to an end and there was once more ground. We took a picture of the elevation sign, which was really the only indication of us being where we were. We stood and looked at the dark outlines of trees down the mountainside. Despite it all, the punch-line nature of the day, and the chill that ran through my fingertips and ears, everything seemed right. We gazed until the shivering became too much, and then boarded the chairlift again, descending into the cloud.