Gros Morne Redux Part Deux

OK. I've been thinking about doing this for quite a while. The people who have done it earn bragging rights. Plus, it's quite possibly the most scenic place in the park you could visit without going all hardcore with camping equipment. Yup, I'm talking about a hike up the titular mountain of Gros Morne National Park.

After keeping my eye out for a weekend of good weather the opportunity arose -- 18C forecast high and bright and sunny for August 16th, 2009. I started the weekend off with a visit to Corner Brook for Chinese food and a movie (GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra -- not particularly good but a good distraction for a few hours). Spent the night in Corner Brook and then had McD's for breakfast. This is the first time that I ate at McDonald's as an adult without feeling guilty: OJ, Egg McMuffin, hash brown, hotcakes, and a decaf coffee for the long hike ahead.

I had a brief stop at the nearby town of Rocky Harbour to stock up on food: a turkey sandwich from the local restaurant, 1.5 L of energy/sports drinks, and 2 chocolate bars. Once I arrived in the parking lot I slapped on some sunscreen, changed into my hiking boots, and started hiking at around 10 AM.

Gros Morne awaits....

The mountain itself is easily visible from the highway but requires about a 1 hour hike to approach the base of it. The approach is a good warm up for what lies ahead with a smooth trail through forest and shrubbery with a gentle climb.

Decked out for a hike. (Note the cellphone on my belt..yup, there was coverage at the top!)

Here's a movie clip I shot at the base of the mountain. There was a stiff breeze which you can hear intermittently. There were other hikers on the trail -- enough to make you feel safe should anything happen but not so many that you feel like you're in a tourist trap.

At the rest stop and at the start of the climb you are strongly encouraged to turn back if conditions don't look favourable -- Newfoundland weather is notorious for changing quickly and there have been a number of deaths associated with this hike. There have been a number of heart attacks and one person recently fell to his death when fog/cloud suddenly rolled in and blanketed the top of the mountain.

The ascent is the first test.

Sound advice.

Fortunately, the weather was still excellent and I began my climb in earnest. As you can see from the above photos, the "trail" is not your typical dirt trail. This is, after all, Newfoundland so it's a trail of rock which is why this is such a grueling hike. With every single step you are looking for a safe place to plant your feet. Since the rock faces stick out at various odd angles you will rarely get the opportunity set your feet down horizontally. All this is pretty harsh on your ankles. You can probably imagine why after 6 hours my ankles were becoming so tired that I was having trouble feeling them.

The ascent, believe it or not, was not the most difficult part of the hike. With intermittent breaks I was able to scale the side of the Gros Morne in 75 minutes. Some sections were a little steep and required climbing on all fours. Once you get to the top you're rewarded with excellent views of the surrounding park.

Looking back. You can just make out the beige coloured Tablelands on the horizon.

Rocks everywhere and the Long Range Mountains are in the background.

I climbed up here.

It's amazing how plants can grow on this wind blasted rock.

Looking northwestwards towards the ocean. Watch your step!

When I got to the top I found a comfortable rock to sit on and had lunch. It's interesting how you can eat almost anything after a tough workout. Turkey sandwich, gatorade, and a chocolate bar -- now that's a meal! The temperature was noticeably cooler and the wind was stiffer as well at the top. I almost had to break out my jacket but the heat I generated from the climb kept me warm.

After posing by the official sign declaring the height of Gros Morne as being 806m, I set off again. The top of Gros Morne was just as rocky as the base but the terrain was a little flatter and interspersed with wooden boardwalks so my ankles got a much needed break. Gros Morne is the second highest point in Newfoundland so I was able to get a really good view of the surrounding area.

It took about an hour to walk the marked trail at the top of Gros Morne and then the descent began in earnest. Little did I know that the true challenge of the Gros Morne trail was not in the climb but in the descent. It's a less direct route involving the southern 1/3rd of the mountain as you follow a gulch back to the base. The path is just littered with rocks sticking up at odd angles forcing you to pick your way carefully. As fatigue sets in your risk of injury definitely goes up -- I wished I had a walking stick with me.

Down we go. This rocky path is on the side of Gros Morne.

Almost halfway down. There's a campsite near the pond on the left side.

After what felt like forever, I finally made it back to the rest stop at the base of the mountain. The way back was uneventful except for two notable encounters with the local fauna.

Close encounter with the antlered-kind. Vegetarians aren't necessarily pacifists...

This was my first opportunity to see a moose up close -- I was about 30-40 feet away from this bull moose. I am respectful of any living (or non-living) thing that weighs more than I do and so I was slightly nervous being this close to one. The tales I've heard of angry moose chasing humans didn't help things. Fortunately, this moose was too busy having lunch to care about what I was doing.

Yes, you're cute -- now get off the trail!

On the way back to the parking lot I ran into a Quebecois tourist who motioned for me to slow down and be quiet. Up ahead on our path was a rock ptarmigan. Another fascinating thing about Gros Morne was the fact that it is the southernmost locale featuring arctic tundra in the world. So, one can actually find species typically found in the arctic on Gros Morne mountain. The rock ptarmigan is one and the arctic hare is another. Given the stresses of living in such an inhospital environment the park brochures ask all tourists not to disturb these animals.

So, we waited, waited, and waited some more. The ptarmigan kept its distance but it didn't exactly run away either. Eventually it just plopped down on the trail and refused to move any more. After 5 minutes we had had enough and decided to continue down the trail -- rare bird or no. When it saw us coming it finally jumped up and ran away.

While we were waiting for the ptarmigan I had another close encounter with the largest member of the deer family. I could hear a rustling behind me and I assumed it was another tourist. As I turned to warn him/her about the traffic jam I saw a big brown head bobbing and lumbering towards me. "Moose! Moose!" I hissed, perhaps a little too loudly. The moose startled when it saw us and quickly turned tail and ran back the way it came. The Quebecois didn't react in time and was quite disappointed she missed a chance to see a moose up close.

I finished the hike in about 6 hours. Although it's not an easy trail, it's definitely worth it and I would encourage anyone who's into hiking to give it a try!

Gros Morne Redux

I revisited Gros Morne in late August when the weather was much better. For easy reading I'm filing the post here so people can read it in context.

After doing some shopping and banking in Corner Brook the night before, I left my B&B this morning and immediately drove to Gros Morne. Here's a nice shot across Bonne Bay and, once again, the Tablelands stick out like a sore thumb:


Next I pulled into Rocky Harbor for the tickets and some lunch and snapped this shot of the town and the bay outside the restaurant.After the brief stop I went straight to Western Brook Pond -- a landlocked fjord. It's a 30-45 minute hike to the dock from the parking lot. The weather was spectacular but also, characteristically, very windy. Although I shudder to think of the wind chills that are generated here in the winter, in the summer the wind eliminates all blood-sucking insectoids from the air. Here's a near identical shot of the dock and the entrance to the pond -- much better!

So, how did they get two boats in here? The first boat was brought in the middle of winter when the surrounding bog was frozen solid. The next boat was split into pieces and flown in by helicopter to avoid damaging the habitat. Once again I was worried about my sea sickness and the first 15 minutes of the trip was choppy as the first section of the pond was the most exposed to wind. A few tourists out front were soaked by some errant waves. Fortunately, the water is from a superoligotrophic lake. The water here is so pure and free of nutrients that very little life can be supported. With minimal algae and other plant growth the lake is remarkably clear. The deeper levels of the lake are high in oxygen so fish can survive here but otherwise the lake is pretty dead. The discovery of the lakes oligotrophic nature has a eureka! element to it: scientists found it strange that their water pumps would consistently overfill their storage tanks. They realized that the shut-off mechanism was supposed to activate when the water level was high enough to complete the circuit. Of course, the water here is so pure that no current could flow through it and so the pumps couldn't shut off.

The Western Brook Pond Tour was highly recommended by my guide book and I heartily agree. The high cliffs gouged out by an ancient glacier were very scenic.
This elevated valley marks the point where a tributary glacier joined the main glacier:
This was the end of the Pond. On the left hand side you can see a small dock -- this is the starting point for backcountry hikers where they can hike to Gros Morne (the mountain) in 5 days. They head up and out of the Pond and, with no marked trails, orienteering skills were mandatory (that or a GPS system).
Afterwards I drove back to Saint Anthony. The next day I went to the Burnt Cape Ecological Reserve where some of the rarest flowers in the world can be found (a botanist would have a "field day" in that place). Unfortunately, I had missed the best time to see the flowers bloom -- mid-June was apparently the best time to have gone. The photos weren't particularly interesting so I think I'll wait until next June for a repeat visit.

Day 15: Gros Morne to St. Anthony

Touchdown! After 15 days and over 3000 miles I finally made it in one piece.

Well, as predicted, the morning was bright and sunny as you can see in this photo (you might recognize the distinctive colour of the Tablelands in the background). Blast it! Oh well, I'll just rebook the Western Brook Pond Boat Tour during a future trip to Corner Brook. I headed out and made a brief stop at Lobster Cove to take some pictures of Bonne Bay and Rocky Harbour.

It's really hard to see in this photo but Rocky Harbour town runs along the opposite shore.

After a few hours I stopped at Port-Au-Choix to check out the heritage site dedicated to the aboringinals who used to settle in Nfld. It was interesting how the settlement patterns of the various people coincided with climate changes. First the Archaic Indians settled and then when the climate cooled the paleoeskimos moved in and the cycle would repeat with the climate. They excavated a burial site in the area and found many stone-age artifacts. They were quite skilled with making stone tools -- apparently they found scalpel sized blades in addition to the usual arrowheads and harpoon tips.

Next it was on to a very little known attraction -- thrombolites. Apparently, Flowers Cove is one of only two sites in the world (the other being a remote Australian west coast location) where these "living rocks" grow. These microorganisms apparently cause calcium carbonate to precipitate out and ultimately create rock. They're sort of (but not exactly) like fossils and being 600 million years old it would make them among the oldest fossils/organisms on the planet. You'd think something like this would have a nicely developed tourist site for it, but no: if it wasn't for the guidebook I would have driven right past it. There was a 3x2 foot sign on the side of the highway indicating the turn off. But no other signage after that. I wandered down a trail, doubled back because I thought I was going the wrong way, and then finally persevered before finding a very simple information board describing the thrombolites. I snapped a few photos but to be honest...I had a hard time telling the thrombolites apart from the other rocks on the shore!

The cluster of cracked rocks in the middle of the photo are the thrombolites.

From there it was on to St. Anthony. While the day started out sunny, it became cloudy and foggy, but an hour outside of St. Anthony it became bright and sunny again. Hopefully a good omen!

Day 14: Gros Morne National Park

I didn't get to sight see much in Corner Brook and so it will be added to the "Nfld. to-do list". Since Corner Brook is the closest city to St. Anthony (4-5 hr. drive) I expect I'll be driving down to it for a few more times before the year is out.

I drove into Gros Morne National Park and it is a sight to behold. It, too, is a UNESCO site and during its induction the following comment was made: "As the Galapagos are to Biology so is Gros Morne to geology". Weighty words indeed. Newfoundland island is geologically very, very interesting. Not only are the rocks here very old (3 billion yrs with the oldest known rocks on the planet being 4 billion) but Nfld. is right on the edge of the North American plate which collided with the Eurasian/African plates in the distant past. That's why the eastern most fringes of Nfld. contain African rocks.

I went on a tour with a Canada Parks guide and he put it quite succinctly: "North America and Europe came close together and Gros Morne was born". The mountains, which used to be rock on the seafloor, were forced up and now have been eroding for quite some time. He took us on a tour of the Tablelands to see some of the geology and flora of the area. My guidebook described the Tablelands as being similar to the surface of the moon. I'll agree it looks quite out-of-this-world but the rocks had a funny yellowy-beige tinge (apparently the result of the iron-rich rocks being exposed to air and water, hmm, that's funny, I'm not sure which iron compound would be yellowy).
It's amazing that plants can grow on a really rocky surface. In Nfld., plants grow "low and slow". Indeed, the winds are so vicious here that you can see wind-damaged plants and flowers. The most interesting native flora include: an orchid (of all plants!), carnivorous plants (e.g. pitcher plants), and "old growth forest" with one juniper bush apparently being around 1,000 years old. He handed out cross-sectional samples of some of the trees and you need a magnifying glass to be able to count the densely packed rings.

The afternoon was supposed to be another highlight -- a boat tour of a "pond". A "pond" is essentially a fjord (created as glaciers cut into the rock to get to the sea) that later became landlocked. Unfortunately, the weather was not going to cooperate. It was overcast and intermittently raining. When I arrived at the dock there was also fog and the trip was cancelled because of poor visibility. Unfortunately, it will be bright and sunny tomorrow -- arrgh, bad timing.
At this point I was wet, sticky, and just wanted a roof over my head so I headed straight to my B&B to finish off the day. I had a traditional pan-fried cod dinner at a local restaurant before tucking in.