Gros Morne National Park

Interesting facts

Pissing Mare Falls plunges about 343 metres into Western Brook Pond, with an unbroken drop of some 250 metres, and is considered the highest waterfall in eastern North America.

Western Brook Pond reaches a depth of about 165 metres, with an average depth of over 70 metres.

The glaciers that carved Western Brook Pond did their work between roughly 25,000 and 10,000 years ago.

The rocks of the Tablelands are a slice of the sea floor of the vanished Iapetus Ocean, which closed roughly 475 to 485 million years ago.

Here the boundary between Earth's crust and mantle, the Mohorovičić discontinuity, lies exposed at the surface, a site recognised by the International Union of Geological Sciences.

Scientists study the Tablelands as an analogue for Mars, because water reacting with the mantle rock there produces chemistry thought possible on the red planet.

The oldest basement rocks in the park, beneath the Long Range Mountains, are up to about 1.55 billion years old.

Gros Morne began as a national park reserve in 1973 and only received full national park status in 2005.

Covering 1,805 square kilometres, it is the second-largest national park in Atlantic Canada.

Why it is worth it

Gros Morne National Park on the west coast of Newfoundland is one of the few places on Earth where you can walk on the planet's mantle. Its UNESCO listing in 1987 recognised a textbook of plate tectonics laid bare: slabs of ancient ocean floor and deep mantle rock pushed up onto the edge of the continent when an ocean closed hundreds of millions of years ago. Around them lie fjords, sea cliffs, bogs and the flat-topped Long Range Mountains, remnants of a range formed more than a billion years ago. The park covers about 1,805 square kilometres and takes its name from its second-highest peak, Gros Morne, at 806 metres.

The Tablelands, between Trout River and Woody Point, are the most startling sight. They are made of peridotite, a rock from the Earth's mantle so poor in nutrients and so rich in toxic metals that almost nothing grows on it. The result, in the middle of green Newfoundland, is a bare, rust-brown plateau that looks like a desert; underneath the weathered crust, the rock is dark green.

To the north, Western Brook Pond is a landlocked fjord 16 km long, carved by glaciers in the last ice age and cut off from the sea when the land rebounded after the ice melted. Its water is exceptionally pure, and its walls of ancient granite and gneiss rise steeply from the surface, with waterfalls pouring down from the plateau. Guided boat tours and kayaking are among the ways to explore the park's waters. Along the coast, the rocks at Green Point are the international reference section that defines the start of the Ordovician period.

Wildlife is part of every visit. Moose, introduced to Newfoundland around 1900, are unusually numerous here — Parks Canada studies found densities five to twenty times higher than in comparable areas of Canada — alongside caribou, black bears and lynx. The villages inside the park, such as Rocky Harbour, Norris Point, Woody Point and Cow Head, are the bases for hiking, kayaking and boat tours on Bonne Bay.

Getting there

Deer Lake Regional Airport (YDF) is about 35 km from the park's southern boundary, with car rental on site. Corner Brook, the nearest city, is about 84 km away. Travellers bringing a car across on the Marine Atlantic ferry from Nova Scotia land at Port aux Basques, about four hours' drive from the park.

From the encyclopaedia

Gros Morne National Park is a Canadian national park and World Heritage Site located on the west coast of Newfoundland. At 1,805 km² (697 sq mi), it is the second largest national park in Atlantic Canada after Torngat Mountains National Park, which has an area of 9,700 km² (3,700 sq mi).

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Gros Morne National Park

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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From the encyclopaedia