Cycle Home

One of the things about living in the District of North Vancouver is that you have to deal with some real killer hills.

My normal bicycle route for my commute from work home is across the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge and then up to Lynn Valley. The official signed (sort-of, if you don't look at a map it can be hard to follow) is from Main Street to Mountain Highway/Keith and then on Mountain Highway overpass over highway 1 and then along Arbourlynn road to 20th Street to Viewlynn.

This route involves two really bad hills. The first hill is up Mountain Highway and over the overpass. According to the Contour Map, this involves an elevation gain of 50m. This hill is made significantly worse by the fact that the road is narrow for most of the ride and then near the top of the hill the on-ramp from the highway is merging on the right hand side and high speed cars passing you on the left. It is very ugly and no-fun at all.

The second hill is from Arbourlynn up along 20th Street to Viewlynn. This hill involves a 80m elevation gain over a very short length. Personally I have never been able to do this hill without at least stopping for breaks along my way up.

Because of this and the general busy-ness of Mountain Highway/Keith, I have found alternate routes that although longer are more enjoyable. Admittedly no matter what route you take, you somehow have to do somewhere around 150m of elevation gain to get home.

The route I take is to ride along Orwell Street, (or the trail along the Orwell Street Right-of-Way), Hunter Street, then the trail along the East Side of Lynn Creek which goes under both the Keith Street bridge and the Highway 1 bridge. Then continue along until the "iron bridge" which is a pedestrian bridge across Lynn Creek, Cross Lynn Creek and take a trail up to Arbourlynn Drive. This trail does have some stairs, but it has been designed to allow you to push a bike up the stairs. Then Rather than going up 20th Street I go up Hoskins Road. It is a little bit longer, but I can go up the hill without stopping at all.

Personally one of the main reasons for cycling is for exercise, so I feel that cycling a little bit further is fine, as long as it makes the ride more enjoyable.