Boating the Pond

Several other campers we talked to told us we must take the boat tour while at Gros Morne National Park. The tour is of Western Brook Pond. With a name like that you might expect a rowboat in a pond set in a pasture.

You might be wrong. Western Brook Pond is an inland fjord, 11 miles long and up to 300 feet deep. From 25,000 to 10,000 years ago glaciers advanced and retreated in this area, cutting river valleys into deep glacier valleys.

This all happened along a fault in the earth. To the west the pond has low lands.

But look east and you will see the edge of the Long Range Mountains, which run the length of Newfoundland’s western peninsula. These mountains are the northern end of the Appalachians and at one time were taller than the Himalayans.

When the glaciers first started to melt this was a true fjord, connected to the sea. But as the glaciers retreated the land has slowly rebounded, lifting the shore above the sea. We parked not far from the coast and had to hike two miles inland to the shore of the pond.

As our tour boat approached the cliffs we got a feeling of just how high they were.

This is a zoom shot of the sister tour boat going back along the opposite shore.

This is the same shot without zoom. Can you find the boat? Those walls are towering up to 2200 feet above the boat.

The other boat is now across from us. It looks tiny but held about 50 people.

This is one of several falls we passed.

If you could get close these would be roaring. Those tiny sticks at the bottom are trees!

This one, Pissing Mare Falls, is the highest falls in North America.

Here’s another one I spotted on the way back out.

I found this fault line fascinating. Our guide said faults like this are filled with lava that was forced up into them and then hardened.

The cracking of the walls can leave strange formations. Can you see the face on the wall? The guide said they call this the Tin Man. Looks more sinister than the Tin Man to me.

The people on a tour in 1994 got more than they bargained for. This huge landslide came down while they were approaching within the walls. It made an enormous and scary roar.

We went to the head of the lake and turned around. The dock you see on the right is used to drop hikers off. Experienced hikers who get a permit and take a safety course can get left here and hike up the valley and out to Gros Morne Mountain. There are no marked trails and it’s over 20 miles, so you can see why there are restrictions. There were no takers in our group.

I took this just because the sun was shining on a spot on that cliff.

As we were coming back out to the lowlands you could see the sunshine was where we left it. It would have been nice to see this on a sunny day but the clouds on the cliffs did add an appropriate atmosphere.