Trippin Tuesday in Gros Morne

Well we've more than made up for lost hiking time today! Awoke to a blue sky at 7am which unfortunately quickly clouded over before we could get on the trail. But the clouds made way to sun by mid day and now at 4:15 at room in Cow Head I am actually sunburnt.

First off - we had a very nice dinner last evening. started with a sampler of cheeses from Quebec - very nice. Michael had the Prime Rib steak and I had rack of lamb - a whole rack of lamb. It was very good - but both Mike and I have left overs for snacking on today!

After a quick breakfast at 8am, we first headed to the Gros Morne mountain trail. It's graded difficult - but that is mostly for the top section where you climb up the last 400m almost straight up the scree through a valley. Given our timing for the day, we skipped the long trail and just went to the base point where the views were quite impressive. The mountains here are very different - they are all flat top due to glaciation. The geology of the area is very unique altough we have not done any great learnings on the topic, they are very old mountain formations / rocks which are now exposed. the signs of glaciation are clear - between the fjords and the rocks clearly deposited out of place by retreating glaciers - with the odd mega boulder sitting completely out of context on a flat plain.

After that hike, we travelled up the coast past Green Point. We were going to do a trail, but missed the entrance so just went to the end of the trail where we found Green Point - a small fishing outpost with an amazing geological find at the end of the 'town'. Green Point consists of exposed sedimentary layers dating back through many geological eras. The point is used as the benchmark for distinction between Cambrian and Ordovician periods as of 2000. The shales represent 30 million years of history of the ocean floor. Quite an interesting chance find!

From there to Western Brook Pond where the boat tour up the "pond" showcases the fjords. Having been on similar tours in New Zealand and craving hikes, we decided to do the hikes around the boat launch area rather than the boat tour. But much to our disappointment, Parks Canada let us down. (not to mention that they didn't open the park office till 9 am so we along with many others had to wait in the morning for our park passes). It turns out that there were 2 trails 3 years ago - one in each direction from the boat launch. They stopped maintaining one of them 3 years ago so the boardwalk is now decayed and you can't really walk across the bog - as well as it's overgrown with trees. The 'good' walk requires you to cross the brook - which is about waist high at this time. The bridge was washed out and they have no plans to rebuild it. YOu are expected to cross the stream. Not quite sure why that wasn't mentioned to us when they gave us the trail map. So instead we headed to Cow Head - and probably just as well as we're both tired and at least this way we can rest before heading to the Gros Morne Theatre tonight. We're off to see Neddy's cabaret. And you can get served beer there too - so it's all good.