Rising early is my normal. I tended to get nice sunrise photos of our campsites.

On this day we would be making for Green Island Pond. There is an upper and a lower campsite we would have to choose from. But that was later.

First, to leave Mark’s Pond we had to cross a swift, rocky creek. Cold feet first thing in the morning wasn’t as bad as we had feared – and we scouted a crossing for our friends to follow. But they hiked much faster than us so they quickly left us behind.

We went up and down several lovely passes. The views to the interior were beautiful. If I didn’t know they were covered in swamps I would have called them idyllic. But I didn’t have to walk there so I enjoyed the views.

The walking was once again much easier. I began a streak on this day where I did not get my socks wet again for the rest of the traverse. Now, my wife thought I was nuts because I would skirt widely around wet boggy spots that she would slog through. I probably added at least 1km to my distance on the day from all my extra steps. But I had dry feet and I think that was worth it.

The group of young fellows from the States caught up and passed us. Several times. They took long breaks but pushed hard when they were moving. They ploughed through the sloppiest bogs – they had totally given up keeping their feet dry. black mud all up their legs, they were just going hard. With higher amounts of traffic, it was easier to guess where the traverse went, but at the same time, we found a couple of instances where the “good” track went off in the wrong direction from many people making the same mistake in trusting the tracks in front of them.

We enjoyed this day’s walk until the very end, just before Green Island Pond. There was a steep draw down to the lower campsite by a wide creek crossing. We had been warned about this place by the guide who briefed us before we started – she told us “stick to the wooded draw. Don’t take the cliff!”

We took the cliff.

We found out after the trail that we would have had to backtrack at least 1 km to find the wooded draw once we were at the cliff. But the cliff is so tempting, because from there you can see the campsite just below you. Tantalizingly close. But it’s stupid hard to get down.

You either have to jump about 9 feet down the cliff onto a muddy spot about 1 foot deep, and if you lose your balance, you’re tumbling down a steep muddy bank for another 20 feet and probably getting scratched and stabbed by the bushes growing there. OR you traverse across the cliff, to a point where a spring leaks down the cliff, cross over that slimy surface without falling, to reach a muddy step down that avoids the cliff. Your only assistance is a 10 foot piece of paracord someone tied to a slender tree.

We made it across, but it was a dispiriting end to the day. Down in the campsite, all the pads were taken by the vanlifers and the young men, but we found a mostly dry, mostly level bit of ground and pitched up.

We could have had a tent pad, we would find out the next day, but we would have had to cross the creek in the evening, when we were tired, then climb a steep hill. And when we got there the only water access was to go down another steep hill to Green Island Pond itself. We made the right choice. This would be our last night on the trail.

Total Distance: 14km

Total Ascent/Descent: 2-300m ascent/descent

Day 7 – Lower Green Island Pond to Gros Morne Trailhead

After the difficulty of yesterday, I briefly considered whether we should hike down to the boat launch and call it a trip. But my wife does not go half way. She’s all in. She said she was finishing this, and besides, the rest of the way would be on the Long Range Traverse, which by all accounts is easier than the Northern.

And she was right. The morning started out tough with a stiff climb out of Gilley Pond through thick bush but the trail was clear at least. Then it was up and down a couple more draws, a creek crossing, but thankfully no more real tuckamore. Lots of interesting sights though. A strange bird family hanging out by the trail, and down in a copse of trees by the trail was a little lair with a pile of moose bones. I wonder if a wolfpack had used it as a den.

And then we arrived at “the viewpoint”. The place where everyone wants a picture.

And it was stunning.

There have only been two occasions in my life where I have looked out over a natural wonder, and thought to myself, “This doesn’t look real. This can’t be real. It is too beautiful to be real.” One was here at the east end of Western Brook Pond. The other was at the Grand Canyon. That’s the scale of epicness.

We lunched at that viewpoint, and rested in the knowledge that at long last, the Northern Traverse was done. Now, on to the easy part.

And it was easier. The path was clearer, the swamps were less common. The tuckamore became infrequent to the point where when it did appear, it was a refreshing interlude. The campsites were more frequent. We cruised through the first one (Little Island Pond) with a 30 minute break to snack and sit on a dry tent platform, and pushed on to the second one: Mark’s Pond. Somewhere in this stretch we had a short muddy descent. My wife jammed her trekking pole in too deep and bent it in half. I gave up one of mine to her and used the bent one the rest of the way as I didn’t need steadying as often.

Coming into Mark’s was interesting because there was a wide flat swamp to navigate and tracks of those before us went everywhere. It was unclear what the “official” route was. Because most of the day had not needed it, I had gotten out of the habit of referring to my GPS constantly. So we fumbled around a bit, until we finally found tracks into camping spots.

Mark’s has no wooden tent pads. But dry tent sites are plentiful. We found one by the lakeshore with a convenient log to sit on and hang socks off to dry. It was a bit of a walk to find the bear locker and the toilet, but we managed. Another couple, a retired couple who were vanlifing, camped next to us. We really enjoyed their company. They told us a group of young men were behind them, so we would probably see them sooner or later. We settled in for the night, resting much easier.

Total Distance: 16km. That’s how much easier the LRT is compared to the NT.

Total Ascent/Descent: probably around 300m.

• Day 6 – Mark’s Pond to Lower Lower Green Island Pond
• Day 7 – Lower Green Island Pond to Gros Morne Trailhead

The following days was likewise perfect weather – partly cloudy and warm but not hot. We hoped against hope the Tuckamore was behind us. It was not to be. There were stretches where the going was easy and we were able to pick our way over stony stretches. But there was a lot more up and down today. And worse: the tuckamore we encountered lined the walls of the valleys we traversed! Now we had to fight the tuckamore up or downhill! And when you can’t even see where to put your feet… it was less hiking and more pulling and pushing.

The highlands, where the tuckamore opened into rock-strewn clearings, were covered in berries. low-bush cranberries (locally called partridgeberries), bakeapples (cloudberries to some) and blueberries – millions of blueberries. There is a reason the bears are no trouble up here – they are full of berries! More accessible and less trouble than any hiker’s lunch!

I neglected to mention just how thick and violent the tuckamore was. On the second day as we climbed the headland, at one point I passed a pair of women’s underwear hanging on a branch. We saw a couple coming down on day 1, before we reached Snug Harbour. My guess it was theirs. It must have been drying on the outside of her pack and the branches stripped it clean off without her realizing. We ourselves had brought a small tripod to use with our phones – we arrived in camp this evening with only the phone clamp still attached to my wife’s pack. The rest had been ripped off somewhere in the tangle. We hadn’t even noticed. Brutal stuff. If you come this way, do not keep anything tied to the outside of your pack. You will lose it.

I wish I could show you a picture that did justice to the terrain we crossed on this day. It would just look like thick bush. You wouldn’t be able to see the ground standing like a wall behind it and having to pull myself up it by inches. Or the ground dropping away at other times, and I would find myself walking on branches suspended far from the ground, wondering where the GPS line was, because anything had to be easier than this. I’d find some easy walking, then realize I was 50, 100m off the track. Then I’d have to backtrack.

Finally, as the sun began to make its descent, the ground fell away on a steep grassy slope, and a lake was at the bottom – our lake! The next campsite was visible on its shores on a wide open dry grassy area. Signage was clear – there was a toilet there too! The bear locker looked in good repair! I began to rejoice.

But then we looked at the slippery, narrow, muddy, slick, grass-covered track that others had used to get down this hill. And with tired, aching muscles, we tried to make it down. It was painfully slow. Especially since this slippery track traversed the top of a 50 foot cliff. We picked our way down that hill over the course of an hour, at our slowest pace yet. The sun was fully setting as we shambled into the shockingly flat, dry campsite. No wood platforms needed – it was big enough and flat enough to accommodate a dozen tents. And the ground was loamy and great for tent pegs. The tent went up in a flash and we settled in with a lovely view down another lake which fell away directly into the Western Brook fjord.

Total Distance: 7.5km by map, 14km by Garmin

Total Ascent/Descent: 3-400m both ways

• Day 5 – Gilley Pond to Mark’s Pond
• Day 6 – Mark’s Pond to Lower Lower Green Island Pond
• Day 7 – Lower Green Island Pond to Gros Morne Trailhead

On the third day…

This is what is known on the Northern Traverse as the “Tuckamore Day”. Newfoundland is famous for low scrubby black spruce bunches, twisted and bent by deep snowpack and howling winds. This type of forest is rarely taller than 8 feet, and often around 5 feet or less. But the height means nothing. It is DENSE. It is tangled and vicious and it snags on everything, pulls on everything, it cuts bare legs and scratches legs in pants. And up top on the Traverses of Gros Morne, there are many many patches of Tuckamore to navigate through.

We actually hit the first bunches of them on Day 2 but they were relatively minor. On this day we would be fighting them all day long. The GPS track we were assigned was our only guide most of the time, as the “trail” would fade in and out of sight. And when the track let to Tuckamore, it was a misery trying to spot where the bush would give way to a slightly more passable tangle than the untouched parts. It would not be a trail or an opening we would be looking for – just a slightly less dense passage. And because GPS is typically only accurate to 2-4m, we could be standing right next to the right path and not even see it.

But to our experience. Up reasonably early, the headland was socked in with swirling fog. We had been warned that fog could sock in so hard we might have to wait hours for it to clear. But thankfully, the fog began to clear before 9am. It was thin enough that we could get going. And it burned off before an hour or two passed, giving way to a beautiful sunny day.

That was good, because as I said, the navigation was hard. My wife managed to find a soft spot in the swamp and sank one leg up to her thigh. I hit a spot before long too. We desperately hoped we would see Triangle Lake, the first established campground in the direction we were going. It was only 7km away, but it was a fight. Still, when we would climb a rise, the views of the surrounding hills, especially the distant views of the fjord, were breathtaking.

Finally we glimpsed the lake. It glistened bright blue in the distance. I saw a rocky draw that pointed the way to the lake and celebrated – rocks would be simple to navigate compared to the tuckamore. But it turned out that wasn’t true for my wife. Her balance was not as good as mine, and so we climbed over each and every boulder one at a time, until finally reaching the campsite around 3pm.

The campsite had seen better days. There were three wooden tent pads in various states of disrepair. There was a bear storage locker, but it looked like someone landed a helicopter on it. All our literature said there was a toilet here, but we never did find it. The most sheltered, dry, flat tent pad there had a nice piece of sod dug out and replaced – someone used it as the toilet. Still sunning ourselves on the unused wooden pads in a fork in the little creek that bisected the camp was glorious. There were no bugs there which was amazing. We soaked tired feet in the cold creek water and contemplated taking a swim in the lake. The lake and stream were very cold and the sun was nice but not quite hot enough to overcome our fear of the chilly water.

The sun allowed us to dry out wet shoes and socks, and wet tent from the night before. It definitely increased morale! We began to look forward to the next day where we hoped to get all the way to famous viewpoint.

Distance: ~7km officially, 15km according to my Garmin

Ascent/Descent: 200-300m both ways

• Day 4 – Triangle Lake to Gilley Pond
• Day 5 – Gilley Pond to Mark’s Pond
• Day 6 – Mark’s Pond to Lower Lower Green Island Pond
• Day 7 – Lower Green Island Pond to Gros Morne Trailhead

Waking up at Snug Harbour we had cause for trepidation, but were ready to face the challenge. We set off fairly early, and the trail would take us along the beach for 1km or so before cutting uphill.

Our destination for the day was not an established campsite – most people who do the Northern Traverse do it by itself, so they take the boat up Western Brook Pond and then turn left at the top of the waterfall. The campsites are laid out with that in mind, and usually when people come from the east (westbound) they are prepared for a few more kms because they have been going downhill, and are looking forward to getting off trail. We were doing it backwards, and expected after climbing to the top of the headland, we would be out of gas, so we were planning to random camp near where the trail forks to a viewpoint over the pond, or heads towards the “Tuckamore”. I’ll explain more about that word in Part 4.

Climbing the hill was not great. Trail markers were more and more scant – few people take this route at all, and the markers were put up over 20 years ago when the park had a vision to actually make this a trail. Now, they are content to let the wilderness claim it and just warn people what they are in for. Once we got out of the draw we were climbing, the terrain opened up and we could make out faint trail… sometimes. They were very untrustworthy as these paths saw more moose prints and bear paws than human boots.

The terrain climbing up I thought would be fairly rocky. It was not. Somehow, it is possible that swamps can exist on slopes. We were sloshing through moss and wet, desperately trying to hop from log to log, stable spot to stable spot (and hoping what we thought were stable spots weren’t just taller piles of moss that would give way when we put our weight on it). It was not long before both of us had feet soaked through.

A word about footwear. If you are looking for a nice dry stroll in trail runners, this is not the trail for you. The terrain is so treacherous, I see why many prefer real hiking boots for this trip, but I chose to wear Keen Gore-Tex lined low rise hiking shoes. My reasoning was this: if I stepped in wet but shallow, the gore-tex would keep my feet dry and if I stepped in the deep stuff, they would dry faster. Higher ankles might have given me more support, but I am not prone to ankle twists, so I wasn’t worried. I was happy with my shoe choice. Normally I’d think a waterproof hiker would be too hot, but Newfoundland is rarely hot and the amount of wet we faced, there was no chance I’d have to worry about heat blisters. Trenchfoot? Maybe. Heat blisters? No.

We reached the top and the weather was getting blustery again. Nothing to block it up here, so we hunted around for as much shelter as we could find. At the top, the trees don’t get more than 7 feet high, and they are stunted and twisted into a mass that is well nigh impassable. But we found a little clearing with thick sphagnum moss to tuck our tent into an set it up before the weather hit.

And the weather did hit. It began drizzling, and the wind became very gusty. It would blow lightly for a few minutes, then hit like a freight train. At about 6pm one such gust did manage to knock loose one of the tent pegs, so I had to go wander the field next door looking for rocks to stack on our pegs. The moss was so thick we couldn’t sink the pegs into soil at all. Once I had 3 or 4 on each corner, the tent held up all night.

Distance: About 5km by map, 9km by Garmin

Ascent/Descent: 600m-ish, or about 2000 feet

• Day 3 – crest to Triangle Lake
• Day 4 – Triangle Lake to Gilley Pond
• Day 5 – Gilley Pond to Mark’s Pond
• Day 6 – Mark’s Pond to Lower Lower Green Island Pond
• Day 7 – Lower Green Island Pond to Gros Morne Trailhead

Our plan was to start with the Northern Traverse. This means instead of the popular boat ride, we would be hiking to the boat launch on lovely groomed trails, then heading north along the edge of Western Brook Pond, destination a Parks Canada maintained backcountry campsite called “Snug Harbour”.

As you can see, we had a choice of going all the way to the boat launch or take a trail through the woods. The first leg from the parking lot to the fork (where the green line diverges) was on wide, gravelled trail. It is well maintained because anyone taking the boat tour has to walk in. At the fork, it just looked like a narrow bush trail heading off to the north, skirting a swampy area. It turns east again when we hit the Western Brook outflow, a creek/river about 20m wide. We needed to wade it but the water was never past my knees. Refreshing.

After crossing the creek the trail reduced down to barely a discernible path – except for where it gets swampy. Still, we ran into the odd boardwalk in poor condition, which sometimes made the going easier. The clouds were building as we went, but we knew we only had a short distance to cover our first day and little elevation to deal with. A good portion of the walk was along a gravelly beach which was better than picking our way along the swampy bits. Little did we realize it would get much worse.

But not today. We pulled up at Snug Harbour in just a few hours, and set up camp. Snug Harbour was very nicely appointed – a good bear locker, a “green throne” toilet, and easy to find camping spots for tents. It wasn’t called Snug Harbour for no reason – we faced a sheltered cove and listened to the wind and rain all night howl around, but little of it hit us. By morning, it was cloudy but the storm had passed.

Total distance: about 6km by map, 11km by my Garmin

Ascent/Descent: negligible

• Day 2 – Snug Harbour to the crest
• Day 3 – crest to Triangle Lake
• Day 4 – Triangle Lake to Gilley Pond
• Day 5 – Gilley Pond to Mark’s Pond
• Day 6 – Mark’s Pond to Lower Lower Green Island Pond
• Day 7 – Lower Green Island Pond to Gros Morne Trailhead