10 Things That Make a Great Road Trip-One Big Thing Pt. 5
When we first planned this East Coast trip, we all wanted to do Gros Morne National Park as a group. I can’t speak for how other people plan trips, but sometimes that's all it takes to get people travelling to a destination. That “One. Big. Thing.” you wanted to go see. Although to be honest, I had not seen the actual park until I started at the base of the trail…go figure.
The cool thing about setting your trip’s target on climbing a mountain was everyone’s preparation before tackling it:
“I’ve been training for months and went on an Amazon shopping binge to prep for this!”
“Man, I’m honestly so scared to do this hike. Not sure if I can do it?”
“Another bagel won’t hurt, also I’m going to carry an extra 30 pounds of stuff on the hike because YOLO.”
“Honestly, I just need pizza flavoured Pringles. That will get me to the top.”
Have fun trying to guess which person each line is!
This was taken the day after the climb, so spoiler alert…we all survived 8)
Looking back at this hike, it taught me a lot myself and life itself. It was honestly one of the most physically demanding things I’ve ever done. It didn’t start off easily either, we took an overnight ferry from North Sydney, Nova Scotia to Port Aux Basques, Newfoundland and woke up around 6am (technically 7am because of the Newfoundland time zone difference) just to start the day.
Lost half an hour due to the time zone change and I was still looking forward to catch this sunrise.
We then had to drive 3 hours just to get to the base of the camp and we were SUPER tired already. We started our hike around noon after a visit to the Tourist Centre.
Should have eaten a banana for cramp prevention-Getting Ready!
Here’s where it all started going downhill (technically uphill but w/e) for me, the entire trail is 18km long and throughout the hike we would ascend and descend 805 meters of elevation. About two hours in, I started getting cramps because I was carrying TOO much gear for the hike. It was incredibly humbling to realize the mistake I made and the fact that I needed my friends’ help to finish this hike. Sometimes we all need to be knocked down to our asses to realize our limits and our shortcomings.
We haven’t even gotten to the base of mountain yet..
Bear Grylls once said: “You don’t know how steep something is until your nose is right up to it”.
Pictures don’t do this climb justice but just look at the picture below. It was just an obstacle course/staircase made out of rocks. There was an increase of 500m in elevation over 1km, for reference, the CN Tower is 553m tall.
It was a really steep stretch.
What you see here, is basically as tall as the CN Tower. Insane.
But after this insane ascent, we get to cherish the top!
Man, to feel the triumph again (It was short lived lol)
We made it to the top!!!
A quick little refuel and satisfaction!
At this point my body was starting to cramp up again because of the short break, but we still had to hike 10+ km back to the base of the trail again. This was when I started hitting my lowest point in morale during the hike and felt the increased stress of being stuck in the mountains after sundown.
It wasn’t even about photos or the hike anymore-there was a real danger to this hike.
I was barely able to enjoy the views because I was absolutely gassed.
It was beautiful though, so beautiful because of the sunset!
A little earlier I mentioned how I was knocked on my buttocks, but the 4th hour of this hike really marked rock bottom for me. I’ve never felt this physically and emotionally down before.
Every step was mean to me, there was nothing easy. Nothing was given to me.
Then something happened…
I found more.
Not to say I climbed Mount Everest, but I went into this state of trance (hyperbole, but it felt so real) and just took it a step at a time.
It’s still to this day, one of the most memorable accomplishments in my life. It is so memorable because I pushed beyond what I thought my body was capable of. Although it was out of necessity, if you think of the limits you have set for yourself before, I literally had an experience where I was able to exceed them. This experience really made me reconsider how that this can be applied to other aspects of my life.
This hike delivered the other end of emotions I look out for in a trip-pain. To be fair, I don’t think I necessarily seek out pain but I have come to learn that it is one of the greatest teachers in life. What we thought was just something to target or plan a trip around suddenly became even more special because of the challenge it presented.
Sometimes the things you want in life are not easily attained. It requires sacrifice, repeated failures, continuous self improvement and a lot of patience. The key is to keep trying though, and understand that there will be pain involved…plenty of it!
Ideally, a great road trip delivers an experience where you take profound life lessons with you, because it teaches you something new about life.
Gros Morne Mountain was THAT for me.
It was my “ONE.BIG.THING.”
I’ll be thinking about this one for a while.