Grouse Mountain Tickets 2026

The Grouse Grind is free. It sits on Metro Vancouver regional park land, cooperatively managed by Metro Vancouver Regional Parks and the resort, and walking up it costs nothing at all. What you cannot do is walk back down: downhill hiking is not permitted, and Metro Vancouver gives the reasons as rock fall, trail damage and congestion on the narrow sections.

So the descent is where the ticket comes in. The one-way Download Ticket is $14.49 (CA$20) for ages 13 and up and $7.24 (CA$10) for children 5 to 12, sold online, non-refundable and non-transferable. Hold a Mountain Admission Ticket and you do not need it, because the ride down is already paid for.

The trade is not money, it is the show schedule and the chairlift. A Download Ticket buys you nothing at the summit: no lumberjack show, no Birds in Motion, no Peak Chairlift, no Theatre in the Sky. It buys a cable car down at the end of a climb the resort says takes two to two and a half hours.

Who each route actually suits

If you are travelling with children, the Grind is not the answer: it is a stair climb with an average slope around 56 percent, and the family rate at $165.90 (CA$229) for two adults and two children already saves CA$47 against four separate tickets.

If you are travelling alone, fit, and would rather spend the money on dinner, the Grind and the Download Ticket is the best-value ticket in Vancouver, full stop. If you want the shows, buy the admission and get there before 11am; the guide page has the show clock and the three routings.

The resort publishes one price list and does not distinguish an online rate from a gate rate anywhere on it, so there is no online discount to chase. What buying online does is fix your date: the ticket is valid only on the date selected, and online orders are capped at ten tickets.

The reseller card is the interesting comparison. The Skyride Admission Ticket was listed at $67.80 when we read it, against $64.50 (CA$89) at the gate. So the platform is a few dollars above the official price, and what the difference buys is free cancellation up to 24 hours before, plus a reserve-now-pay-later option. On a mountain where the weather decides whether you see anything at all, that is not a trivial thing to be buying.

The honest summary: buy from the resort if your date is certain, buy the card if it is not, and do not expect an online saving from either. Nothing on the site suggests a cheaper channel exists.

• No online-only rate is published; the price list is the price list
• Ticket valid on the selected date only, so a date change means a new ticket
• Online orders capped at ten tickets in one transaction
• The reseller card costs a little more and cancels free up to 24 hours before

Start from what is fixed. Grouse's own admission is $64.50 (CA$89). Capilano's admission is priced on the Capilano tickets page, which owns those figures, and Capilano runs a complimentary shuttle from downtown all year for its ticket holders. Both parks sit on the 236 bus route from Lonsdale Quay, so linking them yourself costs one extra bus fare.

Subtract the Grouse half from each combination and you can see exactly what the coach and the guiding cost. On the seven-hour Capilano, Cleveland Dam and Grouse run at $191.37, $126.87 is left to cover the Capilano ticket and the day. On the three-stop tour with the fish hatchery at $206.04, $141.54 is left, and the hatchery is free to enter on its own. On the five-hour small-group version at $223.45, $158.95 is left, and the vehicle is capped at 14 with hotel or cruise-terminal pickup.

The verdict, plainly

On price alone the combination never wins. Capilano's downtown shuttle is free with its own admission, the 236 links the two parks for a single one-zone fare, and Grouse then takes CA$10 off for arriving by transit, which the coach passenger cannot claim. Two independent tickets plus about CA$14 of transit beats every card in the table.

The combination wins on three specific things instead. It wins if you are off a cruise ship with a fixed window, because the small-group version picks up at the pier. It wins if you would otherwise not attempt the SeaBus and two buses at all. And it wins if the guiding is the point: reviewers on these cards consistently praise the drivers rather than the parks, as Bruce from the United States did after an August run, writing that the guide "provided us a lot of useful tips about the city and the surroundings, plus included a bonus trip over to The English Bay".

What it never buys is more time. The five-hour version gives you two parks in an afternoon, and the Grouse guide page shows what a full green-season day at the mountain alone actually takes.

Yes, with a condition that decides whether it is any use to you. The resort runs a free bus between Canada Place and the mountain, first come first served, and only for guests who have bought a round-trip Mountain Admission Ticket or a Grouse Mountain Pass. Pickup is at the front of Canada Place between the Pan Pacific and the Fairmont Waterfront hotels; on Sundays it shifts one block south, between Cordova Street and Howe Street. The published schedule runs 09:00 to 18:10 from Canada Place and 09:35 to 18:40 back from the mountain.

So it is included transport for ticket holders, not a public service. A hiker with only a Download Ticket is not covered, and neither is anyone who has not yet bought. It is also road transport on a route that jams: Harriette from the United Kingdom, five stars on the Skyride card, wrote that "the free shuttle bus did get held up in traffic so I ended up having to take public transport back to the city, but this was pretty easy".

The second shuttle people find online is the free North Shore Shuttle, hourly from The Shipyards in North Vancouver to Grouse, Capilano and Edgemont Village. Its published season ran until 7 September 2026 and no new season is posted. Treat it as finished until the resort says otherwise.

The discount the shuttle costs you

There is a quiet trade here. Guests who arrive by transit are eligible for CA$10 off Mountain Admission or a ski ticket, redeemed at Guest Services and not combinable with other offers. Take the free shuttle and you have not arrived by transit, so you cannot claim it.

A weekday round trip from downtown by SeaBus and the 236 costs about CA$10.20 in contactless fares, or CA$7.00 at the weekend when the whole system charges a single one-zone fare. Against a CA$10 discount, the bus is effectively free on a weekday and profitable at the weekend, and it runs later than the shuttle does. That is the case for ignoring the free bus entirely.

Four discounts are published on the resort's own pages and two of the most-searched are not published at all. The grid below is the whole list as read in Q3 2026; anything missing from it is missing because nobody prints it, not because we left it out.

If you find a Grouse deal on a coupon site, check the date it was posted before you plan around it. The resort's own pages carry nothing of the kind, and a ticket bought outside the official channels is a risk that Mount Seymour, for one, states plainly: it voids third-party resales on the hill.

This is the largest gap on the mountain's own site. Neither the ski and snowboard ticket page nor the winter tickets and passes page publishes a day lift-ticket price for the coming season. Winter opening and closing dates are not published there either.

What is published is the season-pass side: early-bird adult passes from CA$399, and a plain warning that prices go up on October 14. The terrain figures are published too: 33 runs, 15 night runs, four chairlifts, six terrain parks, nine kilometres of snowshoe trails and what the resort calls the North Shore's most extensive snowmaking system, on a mountain whose first official season was 1926.

Grouse is not alone in this. Cypress lists its age bands and ticket types but puts every figure inside the booking flow, and its winter store had no 2026-27 lift tickets loaded at all; it does at least state that taxes are excluded. Mount Seymour publishes no lift price either, though it does print snowshoe passes at CA$17 for an adult and tobogganing at CA$10 on weekdays. So a visitor trying to budget a North Shore ski day from the internet cannot do it on any of the three mountains, and that is worth knowing before you build a winter trip around one.

• Day lift ticket price: not stated on either Grouse winter ticket page
• Winter opening and closing dates: not stated
• Early-bird season passes: from CA$399, rising October 14
• Ski and snowboard tickets are separate from Mountain Admission and always have been

Mountain Admission covers travel up and down and the mountaintop attractions. It does not cover the Ziplines, the Mountain Ropes Adventure, the Grouse Gravity Coaster, the lift-access Bike Park or tandem paragliding, and it does not cover food, parking or equipment rental. In winter the fondue at Altitudes Bistro is an extra as well.

Parking is the one that catches drivers. Every lot at the base is pay parking: CA$10 for three hours, CA$12 for the day, CA$60 for an annual pass, paid via PayByPhone or at the machines, which take coins, Visa, Mastercard and Amex. Evo car-share trips ended at Grouse park free. The EV charging stations have been temporarily removed.

Add a day ticket and parking together and a driving couple is at CA$190 before a coffee, which is the arithmetic that makes the CA$10 transit discount and the free bus worth the twelve-minute SeaBus crossing. The wider question of what a Vancouver day costs is on Vancouver costs, and the free alternatives are on free things to do in Vancouver.

One contradiction to know about before the window

The resort's own pages disagree about toddlers. The Mountain Admission table prices a Tot aged 3 to 4 at CA$5, while the general admission product page says tots four and under are free but still require a ticket. Budget the CA$5, ask at Guest Services, and do not be surprised by either answer.

There is also no tax statement anywhere on the Grouse ticket pages, so we cannot tell you whether GST is inside the CA$89 or added at checkout. Capilano states plainly that its rates are subject to GST; Grouse says nothing. Both facts were read on the official pages in Q3 2026.

For a fit adult on a clear day: the Grind and a $14.49 (CA$20) Download Ticket, bought before setting off. Nothing else in Vancouver puts you 800 metres above the city for that.

For a family, a fixed date and a morning start: the official family ticket at $165.90 (CA$229), arriving on the SeaBus and the 236 to claim the CA$10 credit, on the mountain by 11am for the show schedule.

For an uncertain forecast or a moveable date: the Skyride admission card, a few dollars above the gate price, cancellable up to 24 hours before.

For a cruise call or anyone who will not face two buses: the small-group Capilano and Grouse run with pier pickup, or the seven-hour coach if price matters more than group size. The rest of the city's paid entries are compared on the Vancouver attraction tickets hub, the free half of the city is on things to do in Vancouver, and the trip as a whole starts on the Vancouver Trip Guide homepage.