Newfoundland
Newfoundland is one of the wildest places I’ve ever set foot. Small f ishing vil lages dot the landscape and in the winter time dense, packed maritime snow hides the small vegetation on its bluf fs, clif fs and f jords. The vi l lages are painted with br ight colours. The small populations in active revolt against the grey that sur rounds them in the winter. While the highest point of the island stands a mere 814 metres above the ocean, the deep f jords on the northwest section of the island create gashes through the bar ren hil ls. Down the gashes is where the ice for ms. It reminds me of the f jords of Norway. The Viking explorers who landed on its rocky coast a thousand years ago probably felt at home.
Newf ie ice has enjoyed a quiet histor y mostly due to its main protagonist, Joe Terravecchia, an undeniably ta lented New Englander with a penchant for bold, adventurous routes. Terravecchia ar r ived in the 1990s with a posse of gifted alpinists and ice climbers from New England: Casey Shaw, Mark Richey, Steve Larson and Jim Shimberg, to name a few. Quietly, this cadre of fr iends picked of f Newfoundland’s plum lines, many of them over 350 metres and WI6. Most of the climbs are not well known or reported. Assuming any “unclimbed” piece of ice has felt the picks of Terravecchia and company is usual ly a safe bet. LP Menard and Yan Mongrain, t wo extremely talented Quebeckers, ran into a bit of trouble a few years ago by repor ting severa l classic lines as new routes. Terravecchia’s reticence to repor t any activit y, or to release a l l but the murkiest detai ls, al lows a refreshing sense of adventure in Newfoundland.
A climber can be at the base of Denali or Fitzroy faster than he or she can get to the base of any clif f on the island, with multiday dr ives in horrendous Atlantic snowstor ms, fer r y delays and unmaintained island roads being the nor m. The climbs in Gros Morne National Park are big and well worth the ef fort. The remoteness on the island cannot be compared with that of any mountain range. Often clouds obscure any visibilit y; the wind howls across the Atlantic.
When I v isited the island for the f ir st t ime in 2012, I was blown away. The sea a ir made our ice tools sink to the hi lt and we wove our way up metre af ter metre of per fect, ver t ica l ice. Sk i ing for k i lometres across f rozen ponds, sometimes fa l l ing in, spr int ing bet ween Atlant ic waves crashing at high t ide, hudd l ing under hang ing daggers while the winter sun devoured the cl i mb.
Ten Mile Pond remains the most wellknown of Gros Morne’s f jords for good reason. Four-hundred-metre WI5s streak down the rock faces as far as the eye can see. Access by a snowmobile trail al lows a climber to be at the base of a route an hour after leaving civi l ization. Several of these routes are world-class. While they’re not as large as some climbs in the Canadian Rockies, the sheer ver ticalit y of each pitch stands in stark contrast to classic cl imbs l ike Polar Circus, which involve more snow and moderate terrain. Topping out on Ten Mile Pond’s climbs puts you in a bar ren moonlike landscape, not an alpine summit.
Ever ywhere we went, we were greeted with hear t y handshakes, of fers of food, dr ink, housing, a good joke. With so few inhabitants and such fou l weather, ice climbers staying in Gros Morne is big news. People are not only genuinely interested in ice climbing, but they like the stor ies. Lots of the snowmobile dr ivers approached us with pieces of infor mation regarding ice they had seen.
Newfoundland will never be a worldclass ice cl imbing destination. It’s too far, too dif f icu lt to access, the approaches sometimes too long, it’s too out there. Most winter climbers wil l f lock to the Ruth Gorge, Alaska or the Icef ields Parkway, Alta., where they can get a bigger bang for their buck. Newfoundland gives me a lump in my throat the way no alpine peak ever wil l.