Velodrome Trail

Saturday April 4th, 2015

Did my first hike of the year yesterday, Veledrome Trail on the north side of Burnaby Mountain.  It was relatively short, it only took us maybe 40 minutes from leaving the car to reaching the peak, but it was harder than i thought it would be.  Because it was shorter, there weren't many natural big places to break and the trail itself was a little too narrow, not too much room to pass people.  Luckily there weren't that many people hiking up or down the trail so we never had to pass people, but still I could see that being a problem.  

A good thing about it though it that there's a constant nice view behind you.  I suppose this can be good and bad, because once you get to the top it's the same view as you were looking at before, but whatever, there's washrooms, a playground, a couple lunch tables to chill and eat lunch at the top.  The way back isn't too bad, no handrails or large trees so support yourself going down stairs, but it's short.  The whole hike is short, I think it was an hour half round-trip, including a longer than usual lunch at the top.  

Also lucky it didn't rain, we went a little earlier in the day and we missed the rain that would have come later that afternoon.  I don't know how the sun would have hit the trail because it was cloudy all day, but that could also be a factor since it didn't seem like there were many large trees for cover.  Maybe that'll change later in the season, when the trees grow some more leaves and such.

Overall a nice hike though.  Harder than I thought it would be, turns out it was marked as 'intermediate' when I thought it was 'beginner' so i definitely underestimated it.  Also, unfortunately I'm not as fit as i used to be.  But it was fun, got to hang out with some people, and I'm looking forward to doing similar things later on.

Cheers,

Aaron