Natural gains: 'The Rock' endures

Gros Morne National Park is both a haven for nature lovers and an above-ground laboratory for geologists.

By ROBERT N. JENKINS
Published July 10, 2005

[Times photos: Robert N. Jenkins]

FISH FACTORY: Now restored and open to visitors as an interpretive history exhibit, this two-story building at Broom Point, on Newfoundland’s west coast, served for 35 years as a “salt store.” Inside, members of three families would place freshly caught cod between layers of rock salt, the first step in preserving the fish so it would keep for a year.

	THE FLEET IS IN: Fishing trawlers line the harbor at St. Anthony, one of the northernmost points of Newfoundland. Working four or five to a boat, fishermen harvest shrimp, lobster and other marine life.

GROS MORNE NATIONAL PARK, Newfoundland - Park interpreter Rob Hingston offers visitors a goes-down-easy lecture at the Rocky Harbour interpretive center, close to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Then he meets with them 4 miles away for a beach walk through millions of years of geologic activity.

Sprawling across 1,320 square miles of mountains, lakes, forests and coastline, Gros Morne is on the must-see list for geologists around the world. It is also a living laboratory for botanists, wildlife biologists and social historians.

But if you just want to plan a vacation around hiking, kayaking, fishing or an "ooh and ahh" boat ride through some mountains, the park Morne can provide all that, too. For a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the place is quite accommodating.

Before Gros Morne's boundaries were established in 1973, the area along the western coast of Newfoundland already was known to scientists. It was a Canadian professor of geology who, in the mid 1960s, refined the theory of plate tectonics:

The Earth's land masses, or plates, have been slowly but unstoppably colliding with one another. These movements created mountains and deserts and displaced oceans. Later, volcanoes, glaciers and harsh weather further changed the surface to produce what we now see.

Newfoundland proved to be an excellent above-ground viewing station of the results of geologic events that occurred an estimated 400-million years ago.

One researcher's four-year study of rocks and fossils showed Newfoundland has three distinct zones. The one in the middle had rocks typical of the deep floor of the ocean, from about 500-million years ago. The westernmost zone, as close as 11 miles to the mainland, had rocks and fossils from the ocean's shallow waters and those matched what is found in the northern regions of North America.

But the eastern zone's rocks matched those found in Northern Ireland and Scotland, more than 2,000 miles across the Atlantic.

This helped prove the theory that the Earth's land masses have changed not only shape but also position.

Hingston, the park interpreter who is a mineral geologist by education, hands park visitors pieces of limestone, shale, granite, chirt (probably mined here 5,000 years ago because it yields flint) and the soapstone called serpentine because of its scaly surface pattern.

Standing before the harsh vertical lines of cliffs that plunge into the sand, Hingston announces that this place, Green Point, has been designated a world stratotype: a visible example of the overlapping boundary between the Cambrian and Ordovician periods of about 510-million years ago.

"This park was named a World Heritage Site primarily because of its geological diversity," Hingston says. "Shale and chirt are from the ancient world's coastal lowlands, while serpentine comes from under the Earth's mantle," which is second down from the surface, of the presumed four major layers that make up the planet.

Visible elsewhere in the park "is solidified lava that forced its way to the surface hundreds of millions of years ago. And the park's Long Range Mountains are the northern end of the Appalachians, created between 237-million and 350-million years ago as the sea floor shifted.

"New lava is still forcing the continents apart" - he pauses, waiting to spring the punchline - "at the rate of almost an inch a year, about as fast as your fingernails grow."

Hingston then offers the lead-in to a lecture visitors can hear at another interpretive area: "Underlying geology has an effect on what plants grow here."

For that lesson, drive 55 miles south on Highway 430, also called the Viking Trail, that parallels the chilly Gulf of St. Lawrence. The two-lane highway passes round-topped mountains covered by pine and birch; in the coastal fog the panorama resembles Alaska's rain forest.

At the modern Tablelands interpretive center, near the southern edge of the 88-mile-long park, Dave Morrow offers more facts to support references to Gros Morne as the "Galapagos of geology."

Because Newfoundland has not been part of the North American mainland for millions of years, both the animal and plant species here are fairly limited. Morrow explains:

"The island was covered by glaciers 18,000 years ago. While the ice would have largely been gone 9,000 years ago, the island would have been surrounded by frigid sea water" that probably froze over in the bitter winters.

Not found on the island are relatively common North American mammals such as raccoons, possums and chipmunks. Nor are there any fireflies, cicadas, worms or native snakes.

The park does have wolves, caribou, black bear, river otter and lynx, but its most frequently observed critter has just celebrated its 100th anniversary on the Rock, as residents call Newfoundland.

Two pair of moose were released in the woods in 1904, with the thought that their offspring might do well enough to make moose a target for hunters.

They did.

There are an estimated 7,800 of the huge animals just in Gros Morne and perhaps 120,000 total on the island.

"The government issues 28,000 moose-hunting permits a year," Morrow says. "About 95 percent of the hunters are successful, shooting for food." The meat is not sold in stores.

Repeating his colleague's indoors-and-out lesson plan, Morrow meets visitors at a parking lot next to a large but vaguely orange hill. The image of Mars comes to mind.

"The Tablelands," proclaims Morrow, gesturing toward those slopes, "are the headline for the Gros Morne story." Maybe, but what would be newsworthy here is not apparent.

Morrow leads his group onto a gravel path in the valley next to the flat-topped hills that are the Tablelands. A small river flows through the valley, but the hillsides seem to be only rocks atop dusty-looking ground. A few oddly shaped clusters of thick-growing shrubs lend the only color contrast.

Morrow sees in front of him not a problem but a challenge. "This ground is rock from the Earth's mantle, and it is high in iron, magnesium and other minerals not conducive to plant growth. But across this valley" - everyone turns around to face the lush hillside there - "the Long Range Mountains are from a different geologic period and have better soil."

What plants do grow on this side of the valley are not shrubs but actually clusters of centuries-old dwarf alder and larch, also called juniper.

"The valley's microclimate and wind-tunnel effect make this area appropriate for alpine/arctic plants - plants that grow 10,000 feet higher in the Rockies than we are at now, or 600 miles farther north.

"The fashion for these plants is to grow closer to the ground, because to grow taller means to be bent or snapped by the winds coming down the valley. "The common juniper elsewhere can grow to 12 feet," Morrow adds, smiling, "but here, we call this Canada's smallest old-growth forest."

Gros Morne holds plenty of recreational opportunities that don't require a notebook, including 19 hiking trails totaling more than 60 miles. You can even hike to the 2,500-foot summit of the namesake mountain (roughly translated, it means large, isolated hill).

But what draws thousands of visitors a year is the 21/2-hour cruise through mountain-lined Western Brook Pond.

"Pond" is a bit of Newfie whimsy, for Western Brook is actually a miles-long lake carved by 20 or so glaciers over a 2-million-year period. The Earth's movements about 8,000 years ago dammed one end and, over the millennia, rain and melted snow displaced the seawater with fresh water.

Alternately offering lushly green slopes or stark rock faces, mountains drop directly to the waterline from as high as 2,100 feet. Waterfalls pour down on either side.

Cameras click and camcorders purr, and Gros Morne charms another set of visitors.

[Last modified July 8, 2005, 09:45:07]