M0re Gr0s M0rne
5:17 p.m.
This time we traipsed across the seeming Martian landscape so we could enter a garden of earthly delights. In fact, the hike was called Green Gardens. After crossing a plain of red, lifeless rock, we topped a crest and started to descend through a beautiful forest of pine, spruce and fir, filled with birdsong and wild flowers. A picture is worth a thousand words, so just think of the economy of language I present you with here.
“Mars”
Long Pond
The edge of the Green Gardens
Morning dew sparkling in the sunshine
Mother and daughter with the Gulf of the St. Lawrence in the background
Going down?
Atop the cliff, beach below, with a great example of tuckamore
Sea stacks
Pillow lava
Sea cave (with people for scale)
While we were enjoying the beach, which was quite pebbly and full of little surprises, witness:
a fog started blowing in along the cliffs. Actually, it was an innocuous white, puffy cloud that presented no problem were it seen aloft in the heavens where it belonged, but as we saw it approaching we decided we had best begin our ascent.
It, the ascent, that is, was arduous. We had descended steadily to the shore from the ridge over which you cannot see in the first picture and the way back was all uphill. Not only that, but the fog kept blowing in, the wind got stronger and the temperature dropped. It looked eerie, tendrils of mist curling around trees and stroking us with damp fingers. This is what greeted us when we got out of the woods.
Once upon the Tablelands again, we couldn’t see more than 50 metres ahead and it seemed as though we would be lost in fog forever. Just as suddenly as it blew in, we were out of it and could see our car in the parking lot. We met hikers just starting the trail as we were leaving, and I felt sorry for them knowing that they would not be able to enjoy the scenery as we had.
Once in the car, we had to drive like maniacs (and observe the speed limit at the same time) in order to make our next appointment, a 4:00 p.m. boat ride on Western Br00k P0nd. No road went directly to the dock; we had to park our car and then walk for 45 minutes. Hence our haste. This is what we were racing towards:
Western Br00k P0nd was once a fjord open to the sea but is now a freshwater lake with very interesting properties. The catchment area is composed of igneous rock with relatively thin soil, so the waters feeding Western Brook Pond are low in nutrients and the lake is classified as ultraoligotrophic. It is fed by Stag Br00k at the extreme eastern end of the lake and by rainfall and waterfalls off the escarpments and drains extremely slowly through the bog that has grown up between it and the sea as the land levels rose after the retreat of the last glacier. That’s the bog in the photo above. It takes 15 years for the lake to flush completely, and for that reason is a scientific marvel all its own. It has been carved out by at least 10 different glaciations and is very, very deep. The pond is so beautiful, with the history of the earth written on its rocks, that it was the reason for Gr0s M0rne National Park in the very beginning.
I took so many pictures as we traversed it that it is difficult to choose what to show here. Every few metres a new tableau presented itself, just as beautiful as the last, and I couldn’t help myself. Here are some of them.
Example of a hanging valley
The face in the rock called “The Tin Man”
Pissing Mare Waterfall
One last view of the pond
We had to walk the 45 minutes back to our car, but it was not boring by any means.
A hare
Moose!
Newfoundland has a number of indigenous critters, like caribou (we actually saw some from a distance that morning, but they were too far away to photograph), hares, arctic foxes and other wildlife. Moose are not indigenous to the island. They were brought over on two separate occasions, first one pair, and then maybe 50 years or so later, two more pairs. There are now more moose than you can shake a stick at and you see signs posted everywhere warning drivers of the hazard. I imagine that they must be extremely inbred and hence very stupid.
We stayed that night at Entente C0rdiale, a B&B in P0rtland Creek, just outside the park, and enjoyed an excellent pan-fried cod dinner and extremely comfortable accommodations. If you are planning on visiting Gr0s M0rne, I recommend this guest house heartily.
The sunset over the water was lovely, as you can see for yourselves.
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