Today, our penultimate day on the East Coast Trail also brought us to the penultimate trail section, as we continue zig-zagging our way down the Newfoundland coast.
With cool and damp air as fog covered the Aquaforte Harbour, CareFree and I were slower to start than we would have liked. Despite being somewhat gentle towards the end of yesterday, the trail immediately resumed its usual rugged character after we crossed the creek flowing near our campsite.
The trail was somewhat muddy for many stretches, but it wasn’t too bad. Rarely was there standing water; the mud was usually just an inch or two deep and more of a minor nuisance to just be a little slippery, and coat your boots with a layer of muck. That it didn’t rain at all yesterday was a great boon for allowing the trail to drain out a bit. Some mud aside, we managed to keep our boots dry today.
One of the muddy areas was clearly a moose highway. There were plenty of moose droppings, and a third of the trail, near the edge, had been churned up with deep moose-shaped footprints.
After about 80 minutes, we hiked the 3 km to Gallows Cove Campsite, our original plan for yesterday. (I stopped to use the privy there, so as not to need to dig a cathole.) We were glad to have not hiked here yesterday. There were four large tent platforms, all in a state of disrepair, and no decent flat areas for camping.
Relatively speaking, there weren’t that many overgrown pine trees on the trail today. They generally seemed to like to clump together into a few small sections of ridiculous overgrowth, rather than long areas of annoyance. (We still would have been soaked through had the trees been wet, though.)
We largely skipped considering viewpoints today, half because the trail was still rugged and slow, and half because it was foggy. We took the chance on one viewpoint, supposedly of this section’s eponymous Spurwink Island, wisely dropping our packs for the excursion, and saw nothing but white cloud.
Back when we were going up to Cape Spear, I lost a pole tip, and CareFree replaced it with a spare. She also wrapped tape around the tip to tape it to the pole so it would stay attached. I doubted this would help, but I was more interested in seeing how long it would take for the tape to get pulled off. After slowly unraveling a little over the last few days, it finally came off while I was going through one of the very overgrown stretches of pine trees
Shortly after that, we reached the day’s main attraction, Berry Head and its large stone arch over the ocean. It was almost easy to miss if you weren’t paying attention, since it’s only visible when hiking towards it from the south, but fortunately, we knew to look out for it.
The arch looks pretty thick and sturdy, with a hat of moss and pines, but it also has a few cracks near its midpoint, and lots of large boulders on the ground below having fallen off some time ago. Hopefully it’ll still be many years to come before it fails and collapses entirely.
After the arch, the trail became a little easier, and was maintained noticeably differently. Like the trail after the Spout, it felt very much like a pre-existing trail that became subsumed into the ECT.
In a somewhat wetter portion of the trail, we saw a fair number of green frogs, including one that startled CareFree when it hopped towards her as she walked past it.
Through the fog, we could occasionally see the rugged, rocky coast. This would be a terrible time to be a boat near shore.
As the Spurwink Island Path ended, the sky started to clear, and we began the community walk between Port Kirwan and Kingman's Cove. As we started to actually enter Port Kirwan, it became a little more evident that the fog hadn’t lifted, so much as we walked out of it. Looking out over the town and Fermeuse Harbour, the fog remained over half the harbor, heading back out to the ocean.
The longish roadwalk briefly brought us onto Highway 10 again, and we stopped for a break (and ice cream) at another gas station with a convenience store. Continuing CareFree’s tale of coffee woes, they were out of coffee cups, and she had to use her own!
While we were sitting outside enjoying our break, a motorcyclist who passed us on the roadwalk stopped at the gas station, and eventually struck up a conversation with us. After enquiring about our ability to cook (gas stove and cookpot, no frying pan), he left, and returned with two mason jars, one with moose meat and the other with lobster. Apparently all we’d have to do is heat them up. We politely declined. (For several reasons, including having more than enough food already to finish the trail, and not wanting to carry more. Plus; glass jars are heavy, and also relatively fragile.)
Shortly after we continued, we got offered another ride, by someone who clearly knew the trail and where we’d want to go. (Again, we declined.)
Reaching the Bear Cove Point Path, we followed dirt roads for a little while, passing a house that channeled a spring down to the road for hikers. We turned onto trail at the abandoned community of Blacksmith. A table and some chairs in a clearing there would have made for a great break spot.
About an hour into the path, we passed two nice campsites at Water Cove a bit short of our plan (which was somewhere near the lighthouse ahead). One was inland just a little; the other was as close to the edge of a cliff as was practical to camp, with a view of the ocean (and the fog that was starting blow in). A spider web caught my eye, illuminated by sunbeams, themselves made visible by water droplets from the fog.
After thinking about it for a bit, we decided to stop here, rather than push on. We should still be able to get to Cappahayden from here tomorrow. And, the fog was accompanied by the sound of a foghorn, and if we camped any closer to the next lighthouse than we already were, the sound would be very loud. (Camping near a lighthouse does have its charms, but not at the risk of going deaf.)
During dinner, the foghorn got louder, further suggesting we made the right call to not go further.
Tomorrow will be a long day to get to Cappahayden and finish the trail; we’ll have to get an early start to maximize our chances of getting a ride back to St. John’s.