Heading South

It took us 3 days fighting the wind to make back what we had covered in our 1 day, but we eventually made it back to Gros Morne National Park. This was nice, since we had missed out on hiking Gros Morne Mountain, which, at 806 meters, is the highest peak on Newfoundland. It was supposedly the hardest hike in Gros Morne, but we saw it as a good chance for cross training.

The sign said it would take 6-8 hours. Fit and young as we are, we figured we had it nailed in 3, 4 tops. Turns out these Canadians don't pussyfoot around with their signs like they do in America. It was a steep climb, so much so that we jokingly decided that the record time for the hike by an elite ultramarathon runner must have been somewhere around 5 and half hours. This sign was a bit of an exaggeration, but not too much.

It was a steep rock slide in all senses. On our way up, we heard water flowing underneath, which did little to assuage our concerns about how slippery this slide really was. Fortunately it held for us, and we made our way up through the fog.

The fog can get so thick that hikers who venture off the trail for whatever reason sometimes never find their way back. We were sure to follow the clear markings, and this brought us all the way to the top, where it was cold and windy, and relatively clear, though not by the standards we're used to.

It was a beautiful hike, and all in all it took us about 7 hours to do the whole thing. We were feeling disappointingly average by Canada's standards, so to make up for it, we hopped on our bikes and then took on the steepest mountain we had seen yet. (We had avoided it before by taking the southern route into Gros Morne and ferrying across Bonne Bay.) It took us all 45 minutes to an hour of non-stop cranking to get to the top.

We made it though and coming down was glorious, as always. It also got us that much closer to Corner Brook, where our new friend Ryan from couchsurfing was, with any luck, still alive, well, and ready to receive us.