Boating on Western Brook Pond: A Newfoundland Inland Fjord

Deciding where to go for a summer vacation takes a bit of thought. We live in a big city that’s hot in the summer, so we’re never likely to choose anywhere that won’t provide a bit of weather-related relief. This year, we decided on Newfoundland—specifically, a private, escorted tour of the easternmost province of Canada. Before we tell you about the tour itself in a later post, let’s start with our spectacular visit to one of the most beautiful pieces of mother nature, Gros Morne National Park. And our first stop there was a boat tour of Western Brook Pond.

Western Brook Pond is a glacier-carved, land-locked fjord with myriad waterfalls and billion-year-old cliffs—the only way to really appreciate it is from the water.

We arrived at the car park at the edge of this magnificent land-locked fjord and hiked the three kilometres to the shore. The shoreline is entirely pristine—untouched by development (it is, after all, in the middle of a national park). The only structures on the shore are the building where the boats are housed in winter and a tiny restaurant at the dock.

We boarded a boat for a two-hour tour, surrounded by 600 m (2000 ft) high cliffs cut off from the sea millions of years ago by glacier movement. The melting glaciers eventually flushed the salt water from the now-land-locked fjord, leaving a fresh-water pond. Interestingly, it’s located within The Long Range Mountains, the northernmost part of the Appalachian Mountains. [Can you see the man in the mountain in the first photo below?]

A moment to explain the term “pond.” In other parts of the world, a pond is usually the term used when referring to a small lake. However, in Newfoundland and Labrador, the term pond is applied almost uniformly to land-locked bodies of water, regardless of their size. Almost. There are a few “lakes” in Newfoundland—Deer Lake and Quidi Vidi Lake in St. John’s come to mind. Although historians noted that the term pond was used even back in the nineteenth century, lake seemed to be the term of choice whenever the body of water was located close to an American base—and there were several on the island of Newfoundland over the years as a result of its strategic position. So, the term pond doesn’t mean it’s small—it’s sixteen kilometres (ten miles) long.

Although the weather can sometimes be unpredictable (cue the rain, drizzle and fog), the day was a perfect July day. The sunshine illuminated waterfalls, rock formations and the sparklingly clean water.

As spectacular scenery goes, it doesn’t get much better than this. For a better appreciation of our trip, here’s a video where you can come along with us…