Fortune Head Lighthouse Trail

The Fortune Head Lighthouse Trail is not for the inexperienced or the faint of heart.  It winds along the coastal cliffs in the Fortune Head Ecological Reserve, and includes breathtaking coastal scenery, the Fortune Head Lighthouse, and a 460-foot-thick section of rock which is the boundary between the Precambrian era and the Cambrian period, 538.8 million years ago. Fortune Head was selected in 1992 as most representative of this point in geological history because of its accessibility and abundance of fossils.

When hiked fully, it is a 4.5 mile (7.5 km) loop.  Because of the dense foliage and the primitive nature of the trail, it is more difficult than would otherwise be expected.  

The photo below is a screenshot of the AllTrails map for this trail.  You can start the hike either from a trailhead (A) (47.076052, -055.829976) across Horse Brook from the town of Fortune, or from a trailhead (D) (47.073821, -055.857548) near the Fortune Head Lighthouse (E) (references are keyed to the photo below).

 

 

We are camped in Horse Brook Trailer & RV Park, across Horse Brook from the trailhead.  We drove over to the trailhead and were impressed by the sign for the Fortune Head Ecological Reserve:

 

 

We started from the trailhead at "A" in the first photo above.  To get there, we drove toward the lighthouse on Hornhouse Road and made a right turn on a gravel road marked by a sign pointing to "Fortune Beach."  Indeed, that was the road to Fortune Beach, which is beautiful:

 

 

We parked our Jeep above the beach.  The road continued steeply down to the beach, but we walked down rather than driving.

 

Our trailhead was not marked with any sign.  All that told us it was the trailhead was a small parking area and picnic table, with a vague suggestion of an RV track uphill into the bush.  This is how the beginning of the trail looked from our trailhead:

We deduced that we should follow the ATV track uphill and then toward the cliffs above the sea, which was correct, but there were many spots where we doubted whether we had stayed on the designated trail:

Eventually, we found some yellow tell-tale ribbons on trees, and inferred correctly that they were blazes marking the "official" trail.  But to continue, those ribbons were not sufficient; it was critical to be able to ferret out the path by looking for the slight indentations of hikers' boots or moose hooves.

During the early part of the trail, while there were occasional yellow ribbons, the most reliable indicator of the trail was the faint disturbance of the vegetation indicating that others "might" have passed along that way.

We eventually made our way out to the cliff, using the All Trails map as an indicator of our direction and progress.  Luckily, there is a strong enough cell signal, that we could track our location on the All Trails map and confirm that we were still (more or less) on track.  The rewards, in terms of scenery, were well worth the effort!

Here, Kathy looks down on a sea stack and a gash in the cliffy coast line:

By this time, we had learned two things:  (1) while out in the open grass, the only trail indicator is the faint track of trampled vegetation; and (2) in the spruce thickets, look for the yellow ribbons.  Below, Kathy discovers another of the rare yellow ribbons:

Then more open country and vague suggestions of a trail:

Believe it or not, at one point in a thicket, we spotted a true blaze.  While it was pointing in the direction from which we had come, it was reassuring in its confirmation that we were still on the "official" trail:

Down and up a couple drainages and into another spruce thicket, we spotted another yellow ribbon and a water bottle creatively installed on a spruce tree as a blaze.  From this spot forward for one or two kilometers, all sorts of artificial markers blazed the trail:  bottle caps, white ropes, blue ropes, yellow ribbons -- you name it.

Most of the trail follows across the tops of the coastal cliffs and offers very rewarding views of Fortune Bay:

At one felicitous point, we happened to reach an opening over the water when we spotted the Fortune-St. Pierre ferry as it worked its way into port in Fortune:

By the time we had reached the halfway point, it seemed the systematic trail markers were green tags (see photo below), in replacement of the yellow ribbons:

We will confess that we eventually lost the trail.  Based on the All Trails map and our GPS, we think that we reached the end of trail clearing and just could not find any markers.  It seemed to us that someone has been clearing the trail (and very well) through the spruce thickets.  Hopefully, the entire trail will soon be marked and cleared.  However, for now, it is quite difficult.  

Where we lost the trail, it appeared the trail should have entered a spruce thicket, paralleling the cliff, but there was no clear path.  Because the marked trail would have had us fighting our way through a dense spruce thicket, we decided to turn south, and away from the trail route as shown on All Trails, at the point marked "B" in the first photo above.  We hoped to work our way around the spruce thickets.  However, this caused us to be separated from the map-marked trail by a gully of thick vegetation that we were unwilling to assay.  Reluctantly, we decided to continue southward, toward Hornhouse Road at about the point where two large antennae were visible.  This required us to cross a large wetland -- more accurately, bog -- and we picked our way along routes previously followed by ATV's in order to avoid sinking into water.

In hindsight, we believe the ATV trail we followed up to Hornhouse Road actually were routes that trail crew followed -- in the opposite direction -- on their ATV's to get to the very point on the trail where we lost it, in order to clear and mark it.

You can see how our route (marked in red) crossed open ground west of a large wetland and just east of where it became an outright stream draining a pond to the east of us.  While our feet got wet, we avoided the worst of it and reached Hornhouse Road at point "F" on the first photo above, where we walked back toward the intersection "G" and turned along the original gravel road to our trailhead.  Sheepishly, we got our Jeep and drove back over to the lighthouse, having failed to reach it on the trail.

When we got to the lighthouse, we found the opposite trailhead (marked "D" on the map).  It leads from Hornhouse Road out to the point where the junction of the Precambrian and Cambrian rock is best viewed:

We took an opportunity to gaze at and photograph the lighthouse:

Driving back along Hornhouse Road, we had a chance to admire a large pond that sat east of our bailout track (and drained across the bog we traversed).  Somehow, it looked prettier from a safe distance than it might have if we had had to slog through or around it.

Along Hornhouse Road, we encountered a surprise.  At the trailhead for what was noted as, "Grassy Patch ATV Trail," someone had erected a makeshift totem pole which, while weathered, seemed to be an appropriate testament to the wild and ancient land that is Fortune Head Ecological Reserve:

If you are curious about the scenery on the trail, there is an excellent 34-minute YouTube video that follows the trail in reverse order to our track, from the lighthouse back to the trailhead across from the town of Fortune.  You can find it here.