Newfounland Part 1 - Gros Morne National Park - July 2016

Thursday 21st July, we departed Hawaii at 10:30pm and travelled over 8911km in 3 separate flights. Honolulu to Vancouver, Vancouver to Toronto, and finally Toronto to Deer Lake, Newfoundland. Frustratingly the last leg was delayed due to engine trouble which pushed back our already late arrival time to 1:45am.

Despite this, our first impressions of Newfoundland (pronounced as Noo-fin-Lund) were hugely positive. We could smell the pine needles as we waited outside the airport and the people were amazingly friendly - our taxi driver and the lady at the Driftwood Inn (who stayed up until 3am to cheerfully check us in). The locals all speak in a accent that resembles an Irish/American hybrid and as we found out later, this makes a lot of sense, as 2/3 of Newfoundlanders come from Irish descent.  We quickly found that our first impression of the locals was spot on - every Newfoundlander (or 'Newfi') that we came across was friendly, eager to help and interested in our travel stories - it felt like we were passing through a small friendly country town.

We finally got to bed at 4am local time and got a few hours sleep before rising in the morning to collect our hire car and start the journey to Gros Morne National Park, an hours drive north of Deer Lake. As, we drove North the weather worsened with fog and constant light rain. We looped past our final destination to a town called Parsons Pond in the hopes of seeing a caribou herd we had been told were in the area, but sadly we quickly called off the search as visibility and weather continued to deteriorate.

                     

                          Lobster Cove Lighthouse

Looking out over Rocky Harbour

We finally arrived at our destination, the small 600 person town of Norris Point, where we were greeted by our host Terry of Terry's B+B. Terry continued the trend of friendly locals and did everything he could to ensure we had a great stay for the next 4 nights. We took an early night to prepare ourselves for the first of 3 planned busy days around GMNP.

                

               Trout River Lookout

The Tablelands trek

The next morning we woke up to continued heavy fog, but decided to proceed with our hiking plans for the day. We first drove south west through Woody Point to walk the 4km Tablelands trek. This trek was over a barren rocky terrain that closely resembled what you imagine the lunar surface to be. As we completed this hike, the fog started to burn away as blue sky and the sun fought through the clouds. We had originally intended to turn back North, but instead found ourselves heading further west towards the ocean and the clear blue sky we could see in the distance.
We arrived at the seaside town of Trout River just after midday. By this time the clouds and fog had completely disappeared and we were now experiencing a perfect summers day. For the first time we were able to fully experience and appreciate the bright blues of the ponds and ocean and the lush greens of the seemingly never ending pine forests of the area.

                     

                          Blue whale vertebrae

Northern headland trail

Old man seastone

At Trout River where we completed 2 shortish hikes. One to the Northern Headland and the other to the Southern headland around the bay. Each walk was beautiful - the former gave magnificent views up and down the shoreline, as well as an amazing panorama across the town. The southern hike took us past the huge sea stone called the 'old man' (to me it resembled a dwarf from the lord of the rings movies) that overlooks the bay and on to a small lighthouse station that again provided excellent views. We also observed a number of whale bones - several vertebrae and a huge rib bone that were on display along the beach Boardwalk. The bones were huge and we found out the next day that in 2014 an 80 foot (24m) dead blue whale had washed ashore on this tiny beach.

We headed back to Norris Point and again that night experienced the friendliness and generous nature of the Newfi's. We were invited to a small bonfire on the beach. As we shared beers with new friends, we watched the sunset and were taught about the stars and constellations of the Northern Hemisphere.
The next morning we woke ready to tackle the primary reason for our visit, Gros Morne Mountain. A 16km loop track over an 806m peak - the highest in the park. Luckily we were blessed with another beautiful day and set out on out hike at 9:30am.

                               

                                      Ready to tackle the mountain

Yes - that is the trail up!

The first 4km of the track took us to the base of the mountain and was fairly  easy to navigate, a slight uphill that wound through the forest between several ponds and marshes. All the while we were looking for the path that would take us up the mountain, but we couldn't work out how we would make it up what seemed nothing but sheer rock cliffs.  However, we soon arrived at the base (past a sign that warned about the ascent to come) and saw that the path up was up a steep valley, covered with loose rocks of various sizes.

We scrambled up the valley and took several pauses to catch our breath. During one of these breaks we heard a lady comment 'this isn't hiking - it's rock climbing!' It was hard to argue with her!

We eventually made it to the top of the valley. From there we completed a short walk over a gentle incline to the summit, taking in the view over the surrounding glacier carved mountains and many small lakes. We stopped here for lunch as we admired the view.

As we ate lunch we watched 2 small pigeon type birds peck around the rocks. We later found out these birds were called rock ptarmigans and are very rare, only found on the top of Rocky Mountains. We found this out from an older couple who completed the hike the same day as us in 11.5 hours, JUST to see these birds!
After lunch the path took us over to the western side of the summit. It was here that we experienced the best view of the trip to date. A bright blue lake flanked by huge cliffs with the green forests and distant ocean as a beautiful backdrop.

After some pictures and a rest we started the descent, rough and uneven, and hard on the knees and feet. All the while we kept an eye out for moose (the park is claimed to have 1 moose per square km), but sadly didn't see anything. We made it back to the car at 3:20 pm, bringing our time to a very respectable 6 hours. Both of us agreed that this had been the highlight of the trip so far.

The next day the weather had again started to turn, with rains forecast in the afternoon and evening. With a few aches and pains hanging around from the Gros Morne trail we took it a bit easier and only tackled 1 medium hike for the day - the Western Brook Pond. This was a relatively flat easy trail that takes you to another scenic viewpoint of more cliffs around another huge body of water, in this case a fully landlocked glacier lake. Sadly the clouds had started to roll in at this point which took away from some of the beauty and we were also unable to catch the boat out on to the lake as all berths were taken.

That evening we went to the neighbouring town of Rocky Harbour for dinner. We were keen for a change of menu from the simple fried foods on offer at Norris Point. We chose a fancy seafood restaurant and had some delicious local seafood including mussels, prawns and halibut. This was our final evening in GMNP and was certainly a fitting way to end our time there.

The atmosphere was a world away from the crowded tourist packed beaches and streets of Hawaii and it was a lovely change. It was very surprising how few foreign tourists we encountered along the way. We got the impression that Newfoundland is an area of Canada overlooked and overshadowed by the appeal of the west coast and Rocky Mountains of BC and Alberta.

On Wednesday morning we got up early, bid farewell to Terry and started on our way to our next destination, the capital of Newfoundland, St Johns.

Adrian.