The Evil Lion’s Gate Bridge

I had lunch with a friend over in West Van the other day… and, because I’ve got some time on my hands these days, I thought I’d walk over there. Yeah I know, South Granville to West Van sounds like a long way, but really it was only about an hour forty-five. The main problem with walking to West Van is that there are two bridges to cross. The first one is the Granville Street Bridge. Big, yeah, but I’m used to it because it connects my neighborhood to downtown and I walk across it pretty often.

It’s the other bridge… The Lion’s Gate Bridge… which REALLY sucks to walk across. It’s an old bridge (1930s) so obviously it wasn’t built for the amount of traffic that uses it these days. There are only three lanes of traffic, which are backed up during rush hour, and a small space on each side for pedestrians and cyclists to share. Ok so the really bad part is that cyclists get the inside part, closest to the traffic, and pedestrians get the outside part, closest to the 13,832 foot drop from the bridge deck to the Burrard Inlet below. Ok maybe it’s not quite 13,832 feet, but it’s high. You know how some bridges are high, and other bridges are really high? Like so high that when you’re going across you think “wow this is a really high bridge”? Well this is one of those bridges that makes you think “wow this is a really high bridge.”

I don’t have a lot of phobias. I don’t mind small spaces… not scared of the dark… no problem with snakes and spiders. But I freaking hate heights. It’s a selective phobia… I love roller coasters and I have no problem flying at all. I would bungee jump too… so I guess if there’s some crazy thrill involved I can do it. But I hate just being high up for the sake of it. I remember I used to hate crossing the Granville Street Bridge too, but I got used to it and at least that bridge has a wide sidewalk.

No such luck on the Lion’s Gate. Small sidewalk, and it shakes when big trucks drive over it. So I was pretty unhappy. Actually, I was still recovering from seeing that guy jump off the Granville Street Bridge when I’d crossed it earlier. Ok he didn’t so much jump off the bridge as jump onto some scaffolding that was attached to the side of the bridge. And I could tell by his big reflective vest that he worked for the city so I knew he wasn’t doing anything crazy, but still. He just put a hand and a foot on the railing, swung the other leg over, and jumped from the bridge deck to the scaffolding. There were actually a few seconds where his feet wouldn’t have been touching anything at all. That is messed up.

So after that I was playing it safe. I rebelled a bit on the Lion’s Gate and walked on the inside, but there were no bikes that time of day so it was okay. And aside from a brief moment of terror when some workers who must have been directly underneath me started to jackhammer something, there were no incidents. I did stop to take this picture of the city and Stanley Park so you’d have an idea of how high the bridge is.

It’s not a great picture… instead of actually going over to the side of the bridge to take it, I just held the camera way above my head. Then I remembered that my camera has somewhat crappy video capabilities so I started it up and did a 360… here it is: