"try to grasp" is a perfectly correct and usable phrase in written English.
For example, you could use it in a sentence such as "I sat in plain awe, trying to grasp the enormity of what I was witnessing."
That is what we have to try to grasp.
"So we've got an opportunity that we're going to try to grasp".
It is important to try to grasp the nature of this pain.
Before the mind can try to grasp why, it stops at how.
She is the memory that slips away as you try to grasp it.
I found Wilkinson just over a year ago while sifting Google+ to try to grasp its merits.
Each time I hear the opera, I wait for it, and try to grasp it as it unfurls.
I've made three trips to the city in the last half dozen years, and each time I try to grasp more, see more.
"I still hope the human race will survive, so I try to grasp some of the grim background, but add some lightness as well".
"The mining industry has been decimated; in terms of jobs and prospects, tourism is something that the area needs to look into and really try to grasp".
What Thatcher's detractors on the left might try to grasp is that she was far less servile in her dealings with Washington than Tony Blair.
