Travelblips

It’s billed as the Hike Spectacular! The one that has to be done from St John’s! It’s an extraordinary hike along the Newfoundland rugged coastline! And at the very middle of the hike, is The Spout, a freak of nature, fresshwater being blasted up into the sky as a result of sea water rushing into a subterranean cave…

I’d actually done a hike to The Spout, in winter, just after an icestorm. At that time, it took about 2.5 hours to get to The Spout as we snowshoed directly east from the highway. But today we were going to start from Bay Bulls in the south and walk northwards to Shoal Bay - the longer coastal route. It’s billed as a ’strenuous hike’ which takes about 5-8 hours. For some reason in my head, that translated as about 6 hours, maybe slightly longer with stops for photographs….

The day begun uneventfully - a rare sunny spring day in Newfoundland. My daytripping friend and I drove our separate cars to the Shoal Bay car park, set at the end of a culdesac with a few houses. I parked my car there and we then jumped in her car and continued on down to Bay Bulls to start our little afternoon walk.

It was a perfect day for a hike - temperatures only hovering around 15C, a slight nip in the wind, but nothing a windbreaker didn’t block. Icebergs dotted Bay Bulls, and a little green tour boat distantly circled around one of the bergs before tootling on around the southern headland opposite us to another grounded iceberg. We didn’t walk very far before coming across a large bay made entirely of gently dipping rocks, fragments of sea ice rippling up the sides and 2 big icebergs sitting in the middle. We stopped and took some photos.

Just past the bay, the trial wove slightly inland as we began skirting some steep cliffs. Every now and then we’d pass a steep narrow cleft in the cliff and invariably there would be a needle-like stack in the middle of it, with some nesting birds and colourful lichen. More stops for photographs!

Eventually we wound our way around the eastern extent of Bay Bulls and began heading north along the coast line to The Spout. The number of icebergs began to drop off slightly, but there was still the odd small one grounded near a deep cleft in the rocks. More stops for photos…. We came across a small lonely lighthouse with a door only tall enough to allow someone to crawl in. More photos…
Finally, my companion went:

“I’m hungry….”
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Hmmm. Around 1pm…”
“Let’s stop then!” I agreed.

We found a patch of brown grass (no spring greenery yet!) out of the wind and broke out lunch. After lunch, my companion broke out a map so we could sus out where we were and how far we had to go.

“I think we are here…” she said, pointing a point barely any distance past the car.
“Surely we’re a little further north than that?” I asked.
“Hmmmm. No… There’s the lighthouse… there’s that headland…”
I looked at the map she was holding. “And where is The Spout?”

She paused for a moment, then swapped to the map underneath. “About here,” she said, pointing to a point about half way up the page. My eyes popped! We’d been hiking for about 2 hours and we’d barely rounded the corner and started north according to the map - it looked like we had an awful long way to go!
“Er, I guess we’d better get going then!” I said, hastily packing up my stuff.

And so we resumed out trek northwards. The skies overhead began to get covered in some thick high clouds and eventually the temperature dropped sufficiently that I put my windbreaker on and left it on. But the sun kept breaking through gaps in the clouds so my sunglasses alternated between being carried or on my nose.

The trail snaked up and down little valley’s and hills, wandering through groves of birch trees yet to bloom, past sea stacks with lots of placid white nesting birds, through spruce tree forests and across windswept tundra. And always, never far from the steep, jagged cliffs! Every now and then we’d hear a bone-shaking ‘WHUMPH!” as a wave slammed into the base of a cliff below us. At one point, as we admired a bald eagle on a stack covered with orange lichen, we both commented that this really wasn’t a hike for those with vertigo issues… The track was never ‘unsafe’ but the cliffs were awfully close a lot of time!

However, by the time we got to the stack with the Bald Eagle, the fog which has been sitting far far out to sea was clearly starting to edge up behind us and the sun was becoming slightly more patchy.

“How are we doing? We must be nearly there!” I exclaimed. It felt like we’d been walking for hours - and we probably had.
My companion rummaged in her backpack and pulled out the map. After much umming and ahing, she finally declared we were maybe another 2-3 km away! I nearly fell over (and not a good place to do that!). “Seriously??!!” I exclaimed.
“Ahh. Yepp. I think so,” she replied.
“Aiii… This walk is longer than I thought!” I exclaimed.
“Looking that way,” she calmly replied.

But we didn’t set off immediately because at that exact moment, the sun came out and the flog retreated momentarily and we were able to get some pictures of the bald eagle with an iceberg behind it - possibly not one of the more common occurrences in the world!
When the bald eagle flew off, we packed our camera’s and began hiking over hill and dale along the coastal edge again. About 40 or 50 endless minutes later, we finally got to The Spout - just as the sun came out again!

We spent a spectacular 20 minutes or so there, taking photographs and enjoying the spectacle as the water whumped up the blowhole. I was quite impressed with how much snow had melted since I had been there 3 months ago!

Before there had been a cone around the edge of the blowhole which one could go up to and peer in, but now, it was a hole in a flat piece of rock. Fortunately, the wind was blowing in from the east so we were able to get quite close to it on one side without getting wet - but not close enough to peer in (safely) as I had last winter…

At this point, I bravely asked my companion what the time was… Five o’clock. Erck! I almost didn’t want to know how far it was! “And er… how about how far have we got?” I timidly asked.

“I’m not sure… (more map consultation)… its about 6km to the turn off to Shoal Bay, and then I think… its about 3-4km along that trail.”

Hmmm - another 6km to get to the end of the trail, which meant we’d already walked about 10km, and then some indeterminate distance to the car. Ok. Guess we’d better get going!

As we hoisted our bags back onto our backs, 2 other people danced down the rocks to The Spout. By the time we’d got to the torrent of water which flowed into and created The Spout, we’d encountered another 2 hikers! It may have been just after 5pm, but clearly we weren’t the only ones ‘just getting there!”

And then just to hammer home the fact our timing at The Spout had been perfect, as we rounded the first headland away from The Spout, the fog rolled in permanently and irrevocably! I don’t know if the coast was as spectacular from that point northwards, but we didn’t see any more stacks afterwards and it was really only Queen Mary Bay, another endless hour or two after The Spout that presented any interesting scenery. Definitely recommend coming in from the south if you are only going to hike half way in and return to a single car!

So it was with relief we stumbled onto the cart track which led back to Shoal Bay and my car. By now the sky was darkening to a grey colour and we were vaguely concerned that the forecast rain might happen before we got to the car. It was 7pm.

At first the cart track was miserable - as billed. A stream of fresh water flowed down over most of it, and either side was dense scrubby alder bush and mud. In the end, we just limped through the flowing water. It also seemed like the track relentlessly climbed ever gently upwards…. I was tired of ‘up’ by now!

After a very long time of paddling, we got to the top of the hill and the road widened slightly. “We must be nearly there,” my companion commented. “I can see an opening to the left.” A few minutes later the opening turned out to just be a valley. We trudged onwards.

Finally after a very very very long time of the road gradually widening to be about 2 car widths, we did get to the end - just as the last bit of light faded from the sky. It was 8.50pm! Our 5-8 hour hike had taken us 10 and bit hours - and we still had the 15 minute drive down to Bay Bulls to pick up my companion’s car and then the half hour drive back to St John’s.

By the time I got home, I did not want to move from the comfort of my car seat… It had been a very long day. The hike wasn’t as strenuous as some peaks I have hiked up in the past, but the sheer unexpected distance - and the discovery at the end that the trail to the car which is NOT included in the distance was a good 6.6km - had exhausted me!

But dang, our timing had been good on that trail and I think we saw it almost at its best (a little more spring greenery is the only thing that would have made it better, although I don’t know if we would have seen the icebergs then…)

Popularity: 86% [?]