Western Brook Pond Boat Tour- A Landlocked Fjord

Monday, August 3, 2013

The weather reports said there was a good chance of rain for Monday, but maybe not starting until later in the day. With no wifi or phone we couldn't reserve spots on the Western Brook Pond boat tour, the most popular activity in the park. There were two boats running and eight or so scheduled tours, so we thought we had a chance to walk on. Also, because of the rain forecast we thought people might cancel. The hitch? It is a 45 minute hike of three kilometers to get to the boat dock. If we hiked in, couldn't get on an early boat, then had to wait, we better take a lunch. If we hiked in, couldn't get on and had to hike back, at least we would have a nice hike and could try again later.



We parked in the crowded parking lot at 10 AM and raced down the boardwalk and trails toward the dock to get in line for the 11 AM boat. I was going crazy seeing things I wanted to photograph! I resisted for a long time, then I grabbed my camera and started shooting. Greg kept going. I told him to keep walking, I would catch up. Sure...catch up with Greg the Mountain Goat. I stopped, shot, ran. Stopped, shot, ran. By the time we got to the dock I was a red faced, sweaty mess, but I got my photos and we got on the boat!

Pussytoes

Native gardener tending thistle

Reindeer moss on sphagnum

Tiny orchids - photographed on macro

We crossed 3 km of bog to get to the boat tour

View up Western Brook Pond from the first pond

The boardwalk across the bog

We found spots in the bow and stood along the rail for two hours. Spectacular! Too many photos. We'll try to select the best. Greg was in heaven looking at the geology.

Greg's commentary on Western Brook Pond-
Western Brook and the pond follows the bottom of a textbook U-shaped glacial valley. 12,000 years ago, a glacier flowed from the ice cap on top of the Long Range mountains down to the sea, gouging out the deep fjord that is now Western Brook Pond. Many Newfoundland “ponds” are bigger than Finger Lakes of upstate NY! The gravel moraine at the fjord mouth has been lifted from well below sea level to about 100 feet above by rebound of the earth's crust since the weight of the ice was removed. These gravel deposits and exposed rock knobs now form several kilometers of bog that separate the pond from the ocean.



The vertical sides of the glacial valley allow us to view a cross section of the ancient continental crust that was lifted up to form the Long Range. The rock consisted of banded gneisses over 1 billion years old that featured dramatic intrusions of younger granite pegmatite and diorite originating during the reopening of the Atlantic Ocean as the super-continent Pangaea split apart. However, the dramatic topography of 2,000-foot cliffs plunging into a 600-foot deep “pond” is very recent – formed by glacial erosion during several ice ages over the last 150,000-ish years.

Rock slides were common

Banded Gneiss of the Canadian Shield

Classic U-shaped glacial valley

Joint surfaces sometimes extended hundreds of feet

Typical Diorite dike (intruded as Europe separated from North America)

Diorite dike intruded into an older granite pegmatite dike that was intruded into the continental basement rocks

Rock avalanche on lateral moraine

One of the highest free-falling waterfalls in the world. The top is 2,100 feet above the lake.

The rain held off, and the clouds and overcast added to the moody effect of the huge rock faces we passed. The steely colored water created a perfect mirror for reflections. The rain held off the rest of the day, so we felt fortunate to take the tour when we did.

The upper end of the lake

Light colored granite pegmatite intruded into the older, darker gneiss

On the way back we stopped to look at a shipwreck of the S.S. Ethie, a steamship from 1919 that wrecked on the coast nearby. Everyone was saved, including an infant who had been placed into a mailbag by its mother and sent off.

Wreckage from 1919

Hatch cover

Riveted joint between iron hull plates

We got back to Green Point to discover that our ocean view campsite now had a wall created by two huge motorhomes, blocking the view. We're not sure how the one got in the space. It was probably 42' long. Fancy, schmancy! That night they fired up their outdoor wide screen TV. We could tell they were watching “Avatar” all the way back at our site, the screen was so big. Greg talked a bit with the guy. They were from British Columbia and Greg got the impression they were in the music industry. He seemed to know all about the logistics for the “KISS” tour that had just come to St. John's.

We could have watched Avatar with binoculars

Anyway, the view didn't matter anymore once the rain came in that evening.