Capilano River Regional Park

In Ralph and my ongoing adventure to visit all the POTA listed parks on the North Shore, Capilano was today’s target. This park starts at the Cleveland Dam and continues down stream through the deep Capilano River gorge. It is a very scenic spot and houses a fish hatchery that displays the process to visitors. This time of year, the water flow is very low and so the views of fast water are missing but the river is still quite pretty. I haven’t visited the park in years but have fond memories from talking my kids through t0here gathering photos.

Today Ralph and I would be staying near the upper dam area as there is lots of open space for our antennas and the Great Trail of Canada runs through that area which will give us a 2fer activation. A nice bonus for coming out there. We made decent time along the highway and soon we were pulling into the parking lot. It was almost half full, so a lot of people were here including some school groups. Once parked we walked around the area and across the dam. Ralph found a good spot on the far side of the dam; I was able to secure an unused picnic table near the displays and the parking lot. The Canada Trail looped right around me at that point.

As I was setting up, a park worker came by. She was uncertain at first about my antenna but as I explained what was going on she became quite interested in the activity and thought it quite ‘cool’ being able to talk to other parks. Later as I was leaving, I saw her again and told her some of the locations I had reached. Once set up I waited for Ralph to be ready and then we completed our ten band contacts. Being a double park each counted for 4 contacts!

Having finished with Ralph I started working on remote contacts. The antenna seemed to be working properly today and I soon was able to work a remote park in Colorado. My table’s location where I set up my radio had spotty internet connectivity and I wasn’t able to spot myself for a while. I decided to walk across the grass about 50 feet and there I was able to get the connection and I immediately spotted myself. Soon I was getting contacts coming in from around the U.S. – Virginia to California, Texas to Wyoming - a nice spread. After about 45 minutes of operating, I had logged 18 contacts beyond those with Ralph including 4 park-to-park. It was a slow day but I did finish with a good number in the log. Ralph was able to get 9 added to his log.

Once we decided to pack up, we didn’t take too long to get back on the road. I asked if Ralph would be willing to check out the next park on the list. It is the Grouse Mountain Park and only a short distance up the road. We drove up there and saw that my current plans of where to operate would need to be changed. The area was under power lines! We decided to walk up the BCMC trail bit and there we found some good spots to operate from. We came down the last bit of the Grouse Grind. We had found a few options and were good to go for our next adventure.

Done with scouting parks, we drove around the Grouse Sky lift area as Ralph had never been there. We watched a gondola pull into and then we set out for home. Unfortunately, we were into the rush hour traffic. The navcom routed along back roads through North Vancouver but we had to eventually get on the highway with its parking lot flow. It took almost an hour and a half to get home, about 40 minutes longer than our trip out. It was a nice visit to the park but next time I will need to wander the gorge and take some photos down there. We both felt good about the day and are looking forward to the next park.