Date: Sunday, August 16, 2015
Weather: 28 degrees Celsius, sunny and breezy
Distance: N/A
We explored a landlocked fjord and sea arches on Day Two of our Newfoundland adventure.
We worked out any sore muscles from the Green Gardens hike on a 3 kilometer, flat walk from the parking lot to the boat launch for Western Brook Pond. Here lies the Long Range Mountains, the northernmost Appalachian Mountains, and Gros Morne National Park’s largest lake (Western Brook Pond). The fjord met the sea before the last Ice Age. As the glaciers receded the land rebounded, cutting the fjord off from the sea permanently. Over the last ten thousand years, the salt water was flushed out and replaced with freshwater making Western Brook Pond a landlocked, freshwater fjord.
Waterfalls cascaded down 600 meter tall rock walls. The sun glinted off their spray. Evidence of rock slides like scars on the rock walls were numerous.
The Bon Tours boat tour of the pond lasted about 2 hours. We meandered the three kilometers back to the vans and headed over to Arches Provincial Park, just north of Gros Morne National Park, and then back into the park to Green Point where we stepped WAY back in time observed where geologically Earth made the switch from the Cambrian times to the Ordovician times during the Paleozoic Era.
The geology of Gros Morne National Park is what makes it so special and is the basis for its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
For more from this trip report, click here.
Kate Monahan Outdoors 