Revisiting the Fortune Head Lighthouse Trail

Two days ago, we essayed the Fortune Head Lighthouse Trail from the Fortune Beach trailhead ("A" in the photo below), following the trail (the dotted line in the photo below) toward the lighthouse ("E" in the photo).  As we noted in our blog entry about that hike, we lost the trail at the point shown as "B" in the photo below.  Having lost it, we worked out way out to Hornhouse Road at "F" and then back to Fortune Beach Road ("G"), where we returned to our trailhead.

We were determined to find the lost trail connection and identify where we went wrong, so, today, we returned to the trailhead at the lighthouse end ("D" in the photo below) and hiked the trail in reverse from our original direction.

 

 

Leaving Hornhouse Road to the east of the lighhouse, we climbed north and had this view back toward the lighthouse:

 

 

As does the entire trail, this section gave us incredibly beautiful views of Fortune Bay:

 

 

The trail winds along the clifftops above the water, with views of every cove and point between the lighthouse and the town of Fortune.

 

 

When we lost the trail the other day, it was marked, in the section where we lost it, with green tags attached to the branches of scrub spruce trees.  In connection with our original hike, we posted a link to a YouTube video of the hike, which recorded it from lighthouse to town, which was the reverse of the direction we had hiked it.  In the video, the trail seemed to be clearly marked with posts that were painted orange at the tops.  On our original hike, we did not see a single one of those posts.  However, as we hiked in reverse, we immediately observed the posts, and they clearly marked the trail:

 

 

The posts tended to be located in the open country.  In the spruce thickets, we encountered yellow tags -- some with white arrows pointing the way of the trail toward the trailhead on Fortune Beach Road across Horse Brook from the town of Fortune:

 

 

Here is another view of the orange-tipped posts in the open sections of the trail on the lighthouse end:

 

 

We were about the business of mapping the trail and finding where we had gone wrong and lost it a couple days ago.  But the scenery just continued to intrude and remind us of the beauty of this tip of the Burin Peninsula:

 

 

As we approached the point where we had previously lost the trail, we crossed large swaths of tall grass, such as in the photo below.  This photo shows an example of the difficulties we encountered -- where a fork in the trail presents a choice to the hiker.  In the photo below, Kathy stands on the actual main trail, while a separate "branch" -- trod by eager hikers who missed the main path -- branches off to the right.  In most cases, the forking segments of the trail reunite to continue along the trail's main route.  But not always.

 

 

As we approached the spot where we had originally lost the trail, we crossed through one of many dense spruce thickets.  The trail crew seems to have done a good job clearing the trail -- and marking it -- inside the spruce:

 

 

We eventually reached the point where we had lost the trail.  It sits at 47.077428, -55.844917.  At that point, walking from the Fortune Beach trailhead, south toward the lighthouse, we exited a spruce thicket and started into tall grass.  There were no trail markers.  As it happens, the correct trail headed straight ahead along the top of the cliff.  However, as best we can guess, trail crew had parked ATV's upslope from here and walked down to work on clearing the trail in this area, and had left a distinct footpath through the tall grass -- not along the cliff toward the south, but coming to this point from the east where they had parked their ATV's.  We saw the trail crew footpath, and not the main trail, and followed the footpath upslope, away from the cliffs, until we reached a point where the footpath ended at an area where ATV's had parked, and where there was no evident trail further.  We did not realize we had turned up the trail all the way back down at the clifftop, and, instead, we searched for the trail where the trail crew footpath ended.  Not finding the main trail, we exited through the boggy area that lay between us and Hornhouse Road.

 

Today was a different matter.  We had discovered the previous error, and it was easy for us to hike back along the proper Lighthouse Trail toward Fortune Head.

 

We left a little time to search out the rocky outcroppings that make Fortune Head so important geologically.  We eventually found a point where it appeared that one type of shale was replaced historically by another.  However, the Ecological Reserve lacks signage explaining where the junction of the Cambrian and Precambrian rock layers can be found, so we could only guess whether this was the spot.  However, there was no doubt that, here, the rocks changed.  Another hiker we met on our outing seemed to confirm this location, because he found a piece of shale rock here that seemed to contain a fossil of an ancient trilobyte.

Perhaps the stewards of the Fortune Head Ecological Preserve really don't want visitors to know exactly where the historic geological junction lies, or where they might find fossils.  If so, the absence of concrete information seems to have achieved their goal.  But we were satisfied that we had found the general area.

We headed home and gave a lift to the other hiker who had spent more time looking for the geological spot.  We exchanged information about our hikes and the geology and our respective trips through Newfoundland, and went our separate ways.