Rockcut Trail: Little Harbour

March 13, 2024July 11, 2024 / Maria / 1 Comment

In addition to the East Coast Trail, I’ve done a fair bit of hiking on Twillingate Island. My mom grew up in Twillingate and my Nan has a beautiful property in Bayview, so I spent a lot of time there growing up. I’ve done several of the trails over the years, but in recent years, the trails have been re-branded as the “Rockcut Trail” and I’ve been impressed to see a lot of work being put into expanding and maintaining the trails. Twillingate is a bit of a tourist metropolis in the summer time, so it’s nice to see some care being put into the trails. You can learn more about the full trail system on their website – in total there are 13 trails identified on the Island, 5 of which have been branded as a part of the continuous “Rockcut Trail”.

I’ve done both the French Beach and Spiller’s Cove Trails in the past, but not recently enough to write about them. So this past summer (2023), I hiked a new section of the trail, which is known as the Lower Little Harbour Trail. It can be done as a round trip hike out of Little Harbour, or as a longer hike through to Purcell’s Harbour. I was visiting for a few days with Emily, Karen, and Grant, and it was super hot out, so we opted to just do the Little Harbour loop, which totals 5km.

We thought it was going to be an easy hike (which it might have been in cooler conditions), but it was actually a fair bit more challenging than we anticipated. You start by walking down an old access road to Little Harbour, and then you spend most of the hike navigating around the headland to Jones Cove, before returning back to where you started. The majority of the hike is exposed on barren rock, so it’s incredibly scenic, but could be very windy in the right conditions. It was not windy when we visited (rare) and we had the sun beating down on us (also rare).

There’s a few viewpoints you can hike up to and during our visit, the bay was filled with icebergs! The trail gets a little technical and goes into the trees before Jones Cove, but the beach at the cove is gorgeous and they’ve recently constructed some brand new tent pads at the back of the beach! We stopped for a break and me and Emily went for a quick swim in the ocean. It was absolutely freezing, but refreshing on such a hot day.

After Jones Cove, the trail crosses back over the headland and you return the way you came, but I’d definitely be keen to return on a future visit and continue on to Purcell’s Harbour. I have a strong connection to Twillingate Island, so I look forward to completing all the trails in the future and this is hopefully the first entry in a new series!

ECT Series: Flamber Head Path

February 14, 2024July 11, 2024 / Maria / Leave a comment

I hiked Flamber Head Path for the first time in July 2023. Flamber Head seems to be a relatively popular section of the East Coast Trail, so I’m surprised it took me so long to finally hike this section. I was hoping to do the 14km section as an overnight trip, but the weather and dates didn’t really line up, so I opted to day hike it with Mom and my friend, Sean.

Flamber Head Path runs from Brigus South to La Manche. The trail maps are a little deceiving, because it lists the trail as 12km in length, but doesn’t account for an additional 2km of hiking from the parking lot to La Manche suspension bridge. If you want to extend the hike to Bauline South, you could knock out 2 sections of the trail at once and avoid the access road. I’ve already done the section from La Manche to Bauline a few times, so we just hiked back to our car.

We started the hike at Brigus South and it took us 6.5 hours in total to complete the 14km hike. We did all the side trail viewpoints, stopped at Flamber Head for lunch to do some whale watching, and went for a swim near the bridge. The net elevation gain on the hike is only like 70 metres, but there is a lot of up and down, so the total elevation gain is actually over 400 metres, which definitely adds up!

The trail out of Brigus South is nice and scenic along the coast, so it doesn’t take too long to reach the campsite, which is located at the 3.5km mark. It would make a good overnight trip after work on a Friday night in the summer, because you don’t have to walk too far on the first day. Unfortunately, the campsite has really fallen into disrepair. There’s a lot of sketchy trees that look like they’re about the come down, and almost every tent pad has boards missing.

I found this to be the case at the Cape Broyle campsite as well, which is really sad, because I don’t think the ETCA has been keeping up with maintenance for the campsites. To be fair, it’s a very long trail that needs constant maintenance every year in clearing blowdown and repairing boardwalk, so I know they are likely strapped for cash and time since Newfoundland summers are very short. I know the ECT sees a lot more traffic from day hikers than campers, but I think the ECT could really turn into a cool thru-hiking destination if the campsites were better kept and more plentiful. At the moment, it’s a more rugged experience, which is fine, but a little sad to see the limited number of campsites in such rough shape.

The campsite itself is in the trees and not very scenic, so I think people have taken to camping on Flamber Head instead, which is another 1km past the campsite. There is a stream with drinking water just past the campsite, which poor Sean fell in trying to cross, so it’s easily accessible from either the campsite or the Head. The main issue with camping on Flamber Head would be the wind, as there’s no shelter out there. So I’d only attempt it if I had a robust tent and the forecast was good.

The view from Flamber Head is gorgeous though! We hung around for a while, eating our lunch (including mom’s homemade cream-cheese brownies) and watching for whales. I’d say it’s probably the best viewpoint on the trail, but there are nice views at Gentleman’s Head (km 7) and Gull Rocks (km 9) as well. Gull Rocks requires a bit of extra hiking uphill, but it’s a stellar (albeit windy) view of the coast. Me and Mom hiked up it, but Sean was having a rough day, so he waited us out at the bottom.

Hiking on the East Coast Trail can be incredibly draining, because there is a lot of up and down and the trail can sometimes be pretty technical. Overall, the constant uphill hiking in BC has aided me a lot in my endurance for hiking on the ECT, but exercise caution, because it is a very different type of trail and the variation can wear you out. When me and Emily day hiked the Spout, we pretty much hobbled out the trail at the end.

The La Manche suspension Bridge is located at the end of the official ECT section and is a fun highlight of the trail. The suspension bridge and surrounding stairs underwent a full upgrade in 2023, so they’re in great condition now! But the highlight of this section for me is swimming in the little river pool before it discharges to the ocean. I’ve swam here on several occasions and even though it was a chilly day, the water was super warm! Mom joined me and we had a nice little refreshing soak in the pool before doing the final 2km back to the car.

We nearly killed Sean on this hike, but I had a great time exploring a popular part of the trail that I’d never done before. I’d definitely recommend giving yourself a full day to explore, because there are lots of different highlights along the trail. Bring your binoculars for the viewpoints and your swimsuit for the river!

ECT Series: Biscan Cove Path

January 24, 2024July 11, 2024 / Maria / 2 Comments

I needed a bit of a writing break to start the year. I had a lot of summer and fall adventures to write about, but it’s been pretty low key for me in December and onwards. I was hoping to go on some winter adventures through the holidays, but it’s been a very late start to winter in BC and to be honest, I needed some rest time. So mostly I spent my holidays holed up inside doing jigsaw puzzles and listening to audiobooks.

To start the year, I decided to expand my Newfoundland series for the next few weeks since I don’t have a lot of winter activities to write about at the moment. I’ve been working on completing the East Coast Trail for several years now and I think I might be in a position to finish it this year, so I figured it’s a good time to get caught up on some of my trails!

I first did Biscan Cove Path back in 2016 and at that time, the road to Cape St. Francis was in really rough shape and Biscan Cove Path itself took a lot longer than I anticipated. I returned to the trail in late June 2023 and generally had a much better experience on the trail than in 2016. Biscan Cove Path runs from Pouch Cove to the lighthouse at Cape St. Francis, which is the most northerly point on the East Coast Trail. At one point, I think it might have been the start of the entire ECT, but the trail has since wrapped down the other side of the avalon peninsula towards CBS.

This was a bit of a tricky trail for section hikers because the paved road pretty much ends in Pouch Cove and the gravel road to the lighthouse used to be in really terrible shape. But it was recently graded, so it’s much easier to do this trail with 2 cars now. The first time I did it, I skipped the extra 1km to the lighthouse and hiked from Biscan Cove to Pouch Cove. On my more recent visit, I started in Pouch Cove and generally liked the experience more because you can end at the lighthouse, which is a really nice place to whale watch while eating your lunch.

You can park your car next to the field at Memorial Park in Pouch Cove and then walk up the road to the trailhead at Baldhead Road. It’s just over 8km from Pouch Cove to Cape St. Francis and it took me and Mom a little over 2.5 hours to do last summer. We made a pretty quick pace with just the two of us, but it can be a deceiving trail. When I did it the first time, it took us more like 4 hours to complete, but it was with a much bigger group and we picked a lot of blueberries.

I actually like this trail a lot though. There’s quite a few forest sections, but there’s also a lot of viewpoints. It’s a fairly varied trail and Mom and I pushed all the way to the end before stopping. The trail technically ends at Biscan Cove, where there’s a parking lot. It’s another 600m to hike out the road to the lighthouse at the point, but it’s definitely worth it to walk out there, more so for the whale watching than the lighthouse.

As usual, it was really windy out there, but we sheltered by the side of the lighthouse and ate our lunch while watching the whales play. The first time I did the hike, I brought 2 cars. On this occasion, we didn’t have a second car, so I convinced mom to just walk back the gravel road to Pouch Cove. It does add another 4km to the hike if you walk back the road, so Mom was really cranky about adding another hour to the walk on the way back.

Fortunately there were some other hikers around at the same time, so we only had to walk 0.5km before we were able to hitchhike back to Pouch Cove with a friendly hiker. The East Coast Trail doesn’t see that much foot traffic and the gravel road to Cape St. Francis sees even less, so this is definitely not a reliable option. But it also wasn’t a big deal to me to walk another hour back to the car (though driving was definitely preferable).

So overall, Biscan Trail is a pretty short path, but it’s located close to St. John’s, so it makes for a nice afternoon hike in the summertime! I was happy to return to see the lighthouse.