Thu 01 Aug 2019
No excuse, we had plenty of warning. Just like the slow, dozy mosquitos that give such a long warning of their approach, so it was with the morning thunderstorm. We awoke to distant, growling thunder, saw the black skies to the south, noticed the thunder and lightning getting closer, were in its direct path ... yet, over the next 20 minutes, failed to predict that it would, at some point, reach us. It was at the precise moment when all the breakfast stuff was ready on the table, the sandwich stuff out to make packed lunches and the kettle ¾ of the way to a boil that the heavens opened. The girls remained trapped in the tent. Dave and I dragged on waterproofs and stood eating a miserable, soggy breakfast with lukewarm coffee. Within 15 minutes, my empty cup was filled with over an inch of rainwater. Worse, Dave had left our matchbox out in the rain, so we couldn’t even re-light the stove to make a flask for later.
Despite our misgivings, we remembered the old Newfoundland adage, “If you don’t like the weather ... wait 5 minutes,” and decided we’d better set off for Western Brook Pond in hopes that our pre-booked boat tour was still running. By the time we arrived at the roadside car park, the rain had stopped. After we’d completed the 2 mile walk to the pond, the bulky, black clouds were beginning to thin. Just a short way into the excellent boat trip, the sun had emerged and the sky was almost entirely blue.
Western Brook Pond.
The pond, in reality, is a beautiful landlocked ‘fjord’, 10 miles long, reaching a maximum depth of 165 m and with 700 m cliffs on either side inset with scree slopes, hanging valleys and tall, attractive waterfalls given no-nonsense names such as Pis***g Mare Falls. The original tidal, saltwater fjord became cut off from the sea when the land lifted as the glaciers melted and, as part of a longer geological process, the Long Range Mountains slowly tilted eastwards. The seawater gradually drained out and was purged with freshwater. Most lakes of this size have their water entirely replenished a couple of times per year. Western Brook Pond has such a small catchment area and such a trickle of run-off to the sea via its single outlet, Western Brook, that its water is replenished only once every 15 years.
Few plants can get a foothold on the high cliffs around Western Brook Pond or take root in the deep water, and, when they die, even these few plants decay slowly in the lake’s shaded, dark, cold water. This, together with limited inflow from small, often-seasonal, clear mountain streams, little sediment from the resistant granite bedrock and lack of human/agricultural activity (owing to its wilderness setting), means that the lake is ultraoligotrophic (very low in nutrients) with correspondingly clear waters and much less algae, insect, fish and animal life than would be expected in a lake of this size. Natural rainwater is slightly acidic and much of the lake’s inflow drains across acidic bog, yet the lake water is approximately neutral as water from Stag Brook, the main feeder stream, passes over limestone bedrock, which buffers the acid.
We had never managed to do the boat trip before. On our first visit to Gros Morne National Park in July 2001, our campsite was over 16 miles away and, with no car and only one daily bus (at the wrong time), we just couldn’t reach it. On our second visit in May 2008, we had a car, but the seasonal boat tours only run on good-weather days from June to September. Instead, we had walked the 4 mile round-trip along the pretty dirt path and boardwalk out to the edge of the lake, a lovely route in its own right.
Sadly, the path and boardwalk have recently been demolished to make way for a stark, ugly, raised gravel road. Whilst the parks service is keen to point out that the old path sometimes became waterlogged and that roadside planting will be carried out to soften the look of the new route – and it will, of course, improve accessibility and increase profits (need I say more about its likely rationale?) – it is a shame that such a lovely path has been ruined. How long before shuttle buses are used to access the start of the boat trip, and it becomes another Milford Sound or Niagara Falls with an adjacent car park full of buses and cars and a long line of guests in matching blue plastic ponchos? A signboard states that shuttle buses are not the intention, but I’m not sure I believe that a gravel road wide enough for two vehicles to pass will be used for no more than service vehicles and the occasional mobility scooter.
As well as the adverse environmental impacts of construction and increased visitor numbers, this really got me thinking about the ramifications of accessibility for all (for non-essentials). The lake’s attraction was never just its beauty and unusual characterics, but also its isolation – the difficulty of reaching it and the relatively small numbers of people were an intrinsic part of its awe. Doesn’t opening it up ruin the very thing people came to experience? We all have limits to our ability – but those of us physically and mentally incapable of ascending Everest (I include myself) wouldn’t condone an easy, man-made option to reach the peak, would we? Why is Western Brook Pond any different? Solitude is special in a crowded world and, for me, views without effort don’t come with the same sense of achievement. Personally, I try to seek fulfilment and enjoyment within (and by stretching) my own capabilities.
I have long argued that the best places in the world are actually the second-best and third-best (and even tenth-best). When the biggest cave, tallest hill, purest lake, whitest sandy beach, most ornate building and oldest archeological remains have become over-developed and are being visited daily by the world and his wife – a human conveyer belt of people waiting their turn for the obligatory selfie and to buy their overpriced coffee, ice cream and souvenir to clutter their life and be forgotten a week after arriving home – then I’ll be heading the other way to the second-biggest, second-tallest, second-purest, the not-quite-so-white, not-quite-so-ornate and not-quite-so-old, under my own steam, with a few other intrepid souls, and there won’t be a selfie of me in sight!
We did manage a slight boardwalk detour on the way back after the boat tour, a sideways loop to reach the edge of Western Brook (the outflow stream with its fast-flowing, rocky shallows and deep, wide, slow ‘steadies’) before returning to the monotonous gravel road. The journey passed quickly enough as we reminded each other of rum family stories. Like the time at home this spring when Poppy had misread the packaging on our pork loin steaks and, horrified, asked why we were having lion steaks for tea. (Mind you, a lion steak might just ring the changes out here. Dave purchased so many jars of tomato sauce and bags of pasta in St Johns that we are struggling to get through them before we fly out, and are having to eat tomato pasta two nights out of every three.) And there was the time Poppy’s teacher recently wrote ‘awful and depressing’ on her literacy homework. I thought the comment a bit strong for what was a decent attempt by a ten-year-old ... until Poppy pointed out that they were merely spelling corrections.
We needed some more camping gas and feared that a journey back to Deer Lake, an hour’s drive away, might be required. Thankfully, the relatively large community (1000 residents) of Rocky Harbour came up trumps with just the second place we tried, officially a pharmacy, selling the right sort of gas. Shops in small Newfoundland communities sell whatever eclectic mix of items they think people might buy, so it is never worth going by the shop name.
Heading back north, we stopped to do the out-and-back Coastal Trail, two miles each way, from the mouth of Bakers Brook to Green Point, under a layered grey sky, across pebbles and boardwalk, past boulder-strewn ponds and through tuckamore (stunted coastal trees, low and bent from the fierce winds) and patches of ripening wild strawberries. We passed a pair of the bright red Adirondack chairs that are a ubiquitous feature on Newfoundland’s more popular trails, providing an artistic (and useful) focal point in the extensive, rocky, brown, green and blue landscape.
Coastal Trail.
The girls had picked up a large, circular piece of driftwood and a few other small bits of washed-up wood on the Coastal Trail. Back at the campsite, they begged the acrylic paints off Pam and Bob again, so that they could secretly make a piece of craftwork for them. Dave and I left them to it and headed across the dunes of Shallow Bay to watch the romantic mist and murk rolling in off the sea.
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