Gros Morne National Park

One of the highlights of our recent holiday in Newfoundland was Gros Morne National Park,  a world heritage site located on the west coast. The park takes its name from Newfoundland’s second-highest mountain peak (at 806 m or 2,644 ft) located within the park. Its French meaning is “large mountain standing alone,” or more literally “great sombre.”

The park offers a wide variety of activities for its visitors: hiking, kayaking, touring,boating, fishing and of course, photography.

Today’s blog features pictures from some of the most popular venues in the park, beginning with this scene from Trout River. Gross Morne includes a number of villages where people live and earn their livelihood. The community of Trout River is a small rural fishing village located on the southern coastal edge of the park. It was first settled in 1815. This photograph’s subject is three, colourful fishing sheds near the entrance to the harbour. Not surprisingly, they look a little weather beaten. Time for a fresh coat of paint.

En route to Trout River, we traveled through the Tablelands. The Tablelands look more like a barren desert than traditional Newfoundland. This is due to the ultramafic rock (perodite), which makes up the Tablelands. It is thought to originate in the Earth’s mantle and was forced up from the depths during a plate collision several hundred million years ago. Peridotite lacks the usual nutrients required to sustain most plant life, hence its barren appearance. Peridotite is high in iron, which accounts for its brownish colour (rusted colour). This photograph was taken from the roadside; other photographic opportunities exist on the trail system in this area of the park.

We spent four days in the park, staying at a hotel in Norris Point. This small community offered some good photographic opportunities including this picture taken at night, just outside the hotel. Western Newfoundland is well suited to astrophotography. Its small communities create very little light pollution which makes this type of photography virtually impossible in more populous areas. It’s also import to avoid bright moonlight which will overpower the light of the stars. This photo was taken on September 24, just four days after the new moon.

Another popular stop in Gros Morne is the Lobster Cove Head Lighthouse. The exhibits on display highlight the people and heritage of the area, showcasing historical photos, audio recordings of folk songs and lightkeepers logbooks. One of our co-travelers enjoyed an impromptu sing-along led by one of the guides playing guitar. The area around the lighthouse has a number of walking trails, providing many perspectives of the lighthouse (one such perspective captured here) and excellent views of Bonne Bay and the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

One such view follows.

 

A little further up the west coast is Broom Point. This location features a preserved fishing village including the home (pictured here) of the three Mudge brothers and their families who fished at Broom Point from 1941 to 1975. The display also includes hand built boats, fishing gear and a fishing shed that preserve the history of the west coast’s fishery.

The jewel of Gros Morne National Park is Western Brook Pond, a fjord-like gorge, carved from the surrounding plateau by glaciers. After the glaciers melted, the land rebounded and the fjord was cut off from the sea. Salty water was eventually flushed from the fjord leaving it fresh and technically, no longer a fjord. The term “pond” seems like an understatement, given its length of 16 km (9mi.), width of 1.5 km (1 mi.) and a maximum depth of 165 m (540 ft.) The rock walls bordering the Pond are 600 m (1,970 ft.) in height. We took a two hour boat trip up the bond, which I will summarize in the following two photographs (hardly adequate!)

I begin with this picture taken as our boat approached the entry to the gorge.

This next  shot captures the interestingly named “Pissing Mare” Falls. The falls drop 350 metres (1148 ft). into the Pond.