Climbing North, Ever North

Gros Morne National Park on a better morning.

Gros Morne National Park looms grimly through the mist of a damp day on Newfoundland's west coast.

Gros Morne is a National Park as well as being a World Heritage Site. It's because in the early, early years of this planet's gestation glaciation laid bare the bones of the Earth and a rare chapter of the Earth's history is exposed – an ocean floor upturned, the deepest layers on top – a wondrous example of plate tectonics. Now I don't normally get that excited by plate tectonics – and I am not exactly orgasmic over this park. But it is interesting and – particularly – it is photogenic, always a plus for me.

We came to Gros Morne on a dreary, drizzling day. It was difficult to see much of the plate tectonics. But the gloomy scenery is quite reminiscent of Scotland on a summer's day. Low strands of clouds rolled down the mountains to the sea. Fisherman pushed their sturdy little wooden boats through the placid water to collect their catch.

We'd come here to Newfoundland on the short ferry – a seven-hour ride that began at 4 on Monday morning. We'd parked the rig at the ferry terminal on Sunday afternoon and settled in to wait. There seemed no point in going to a campground and leaving at midnight! At 11 at night, however, strange clicking sounds emanated from our refrigerator. I was asleep but Jo woke me. I checked the voltage in the rig and it told me we were at a dangerously low 9.4 volts, hence the protesting fridge. I turned it off, then started the generator, all the time trying to figure what was going on to cause this. I brought the batteries back up to 13 volts by 3:30 when we boarded the ferry, an enormous vessel named Atlantic Vision. She is is 700 feet long and her job seemed mostly to carry dozens of tractor trailers across to the island. She can carry 702 passengers. We drove aboard on one of the lower levels while trucks boarded on a ramp above our rig.

We spent the crossing dozing in and out of sleep, arriving in Port aux Basque at 10:30 in the morning. We drove for an hour and decided to call it a day at a campground. Then, I set about pulling my batteries out of the rig. I have an automatic battery filler because of the inaccessibility of the batteries and because of their weight when moving them. When I pulled this apart, however, I found the filling system had failed to pump water into one of the cells in the rear battery. I topped everything off, figuring I probably have fried that battery.

Then we took a hike through the woods along the river at the campground. At every turn in the trail was an inspirational saying that amused and calmed our nerves. We were in bed by 8 p.m. and slept for 12 hours.

Newfoundland is a wonderful mixture of green mountains – similar to Vermont – but much lonelier. There are fewer people on this island – 522,000 – than in the state of Vermont – but it must be 20 times larger than that state. Moose seem to be doing quite well, however. Four moose were introduced to the island in the early 1900s and they've been working hard so there are now more than 200,000. Don't even ask about the inter-breeding in this population!

Lots of signs warn us to save a life – our own!

Thursday dawned bright and crisp and clear – 42 degrees. Not a cloud visible. The Gulf of St. Lawrence is a rich azure and visibility seems to reach forever. We drove the only road north. This route did not exist before 1968. Before that time the little fishing villages we pass through were isolated and could only be reached by boat. We came through the national park and were able to see Tablelands which was invisible and much closer yesterday. Now the rugged rock structures stand bold on the water's edge. Off to our right is a fjord with rocky escarpments rising 2,000 feet from the water. You can take a boat ride through the fjord if you are willing to hike 3 kilometers each way through the bog.

As we climbed farther north, we found people growing potatoes in little garden patches in peat alongside the road. There were numerous scarecrows and the rich peat made for ideal gardening. These patches seem endless miles away from the little settlements.

Now the gulf between Newfoundland and Labrador is narrowing. It's possible to see the low, dark Labrador coastline in the distance. As we go even farther north, that will eventually be just a few miles across the straits.

We came to rest at Torrent River where Atlantic salmon make the run up the river to spawn and rest before doing their return visit to the ocean. These guys are quite different from the Pacific salmon we watched spawn and die in Alaska last year. They are capable of making the freshwater-saltwater transition up to five or six times in their lifespan. Just like the Pacific salmon, though, they have a hard-wired instruction that demands they return to their natal stream.

We visited the Torrent River Fishway and met an informative young woman with a Newfoundland accent that was a struggle to understand. There was a definite hint of Irish in it, along with colloquialisms that defined her as a Newfie. But as she spoke we learned of the fight to bring the river back after loggers virtually destroyed the spawning grounds of the salmon.

Now 5,000 fish make the trek upstream each year. Happily, we were there for the journey. A fishway - or fish ladder - encourages the salmon to make their way around the massive 100-foot-high waterfall they'd try to climb. This takes them through a 34-step-program where they can climb and rest, climb and rest.

When our guide took us underground, we came into a large room with two 10-foot-wide windows that let us view the salmon as they reached the next to the top ladder. Some of them were 40-inches long. Some were 20 inches. A few were showing the wear and tear of the journey and had sustained cuts and gashes on their flesh.

Our guide said the fish gather in great schools in the straits offshore. They know they must make it back to the stream of their birth. But there is a great gathering in which fish seem to line up for each of their birth streams. Then they depart and head inland. Each river is lined with fishermen who are using fly rods only. The salmon will not eat once they enter the fresh water, our guide told us.

So why would they be tempted by the fly on the rod? "We think it is more an annoyance to them than anything, ya-know," she said. "They kind of lash out at it and sometime get caught. But, mostly, they don't get caught and manage to make the journey home where they spawn and linger, still not eating, for weeks before they decide to make a dash for the ocean again. They come down the waterfall backwards (tail first), our guide told us. Then they gather offshore and head out for as far away as Scotland, France and Spain before returning the following year.

In the evening, we drove over to a beautiful little village named Port aux Choix where we wandered a quiet path through a place called Philip's Gardens on the top of a cliff. Lichen, ferns, junipers, bunchberries, wild strawberries, buttercups by the millions - maybe billions - welcomed us in the warm evening air. It was a perfect way to end the day.

Back at our campground, we met our neighbor, an accountant/home builder (interesting combination, I thought) from St. John's, Newfoundland. He was settling in around his campfire outside his new 43-foot motor home. He told us he had bought it in Orlando, Florida, and had recently driven it north to his home. Now he was out on a 2-week fishing trip and decided to park on the banks of the Torrent River.