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| Where do I start with Western Brook
Pond? It's quite magnificent, definitely on the "not to be missed" list
for Gros Morne National Park and for Newfoundland. It's a moderate to easy 3
km return trail with a boat ride at the mid-point. The
Parks Canada website describes it as: "Leading to the Western Brook Pond
boat tour, with a spur trail to a beach near Stag Brook. The trail crosses
coastal bogs and low forested limestone ridges over gentle terrain and
boardwalks. The view alone is worth the hike, even if you are not able to take
the boat tour." The "pond" is fascinating since it started out long, long ago as a fjord in from the sea. As the ice melted, it let the lowlands in front of the cliffs rise up, and the fiord was cut-off from the sea except for the Western Brook. The fjord was then a pond and gradually the rain and run-off water turned it from salt to fresh. In fact it is so fresh, so lacking in ionized salts that some water sensors think there's no water there! | ||
| You start out on this boardwalk across the bogs and you can see the cliffs that surround the pond off in the distance. It only takes 45 minutes to walk in. | |
| As you get closer to the boat launch .... | |
| You can gradually see more and more .... | |
| Definition in the cliffs. | |
| Soon you're at the boat. They have two of them running on the pond and they pack about 40 people on board. That's 40 people, and of course about 65 still and video cameras. | |
| And before you know it you're OFF. | |
| It seems quite gradual as you slowly approach the inlet to the fjord. The captain keeps well to one side of the pond so that .... | |
| As you get closer to the entrance, the cliffs rise up around you and you're always waiting to see what's around the next bend. | |
| The trip was full of striking cliffs, rockslides and water falls. The pilot took the boat right up to this fall, so close that we could almost touch the walls. | |
| And further off in the distance there were more falls, way up above the pond .... | |
| And more falls .... | |
| And more falls. | |
| At the far end of the pond we could look up toward the headwaters. Look at the top of the cliff in the distance. That's the place where the film is taken in the Gros Morne National Park commercial that has been running on TV lately. It has a man standing up there, arms spread wide, looking out at the whole pond. | |
| On the way back out to the boat dock, the sharp-eyed captain picked out a moose way up on the slopes. People without telephoto lenses ended up with a field of green and rocks, and a brown speck in the middle of it. | |
| Then we were back on shore, looking back at the cliffs lining the pond, so glad that the sun had come out - a little late, but better than never. |