Up to your knees in gravel: Iconic Western Brook Pond boardwalk replaced

It's one of GrosMorneNational Park's most photographed scenes, but now an outdoor adventure guide worries that replacing the original boardwalk toWestern Brook Pondwith gravelthreatens the future of the environment and business in the area.

Parks Canada sees it differently, saying the newtrail will allow for better access to the park.

The popular trail on Newfoundland's west coast issurrounded by some of the most beautiful wilderness the province has to offer and draws thousands of visitors each summer for camping and hiking adventures.

"Part of that experience has always been the lovely walk into the pond," Alice Will, an outdoor adventure guide for Wild Women Expeditions told CBC Radio's Corner Brook Morning Show.

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"Right before the boat, for those first three kilometres, there's a beautiful wetland there with dragon's mouth orchids, pitcher plants and irises. And it's been a wonderful way to identify plants, take some photos, and now it has completely changed."

The trail has been widened into what resembles a dirt road that can be found in any cabin subdivision around the province, instead of the well-known boardwalk and foot paths.

Safety a priority, addressing accessibility

Parks Canada sayswideningthe trail will allow for better emergency response, should something happen to a park visitor on the trail.

The old boardwalk wasa hazard says Carla Wheaton, GrosMorne'svisitor experience manager.

"We've had a number of visitors, not a huge number, but several over the last couple of years that would slip on the wet boardwalk," Wheaton said.

"One individual actually broke a kneecap. Another individual had a head injury. So there were a variety of issues that led us to conclude that we needed to rehabilitate that trail."

While the trail may now look like a road to some, Parks Canada says it won't be used as one. It says the wider trail with crushed stone will allow for the park to open up some interesting possibilities in the future.

"We have no intention to open it up to public [vehicle]traffic," Wheaton said.

"One of the consequences of the work we have done to facilitate more pedestrian traffic and the use ofATVs, possibly, to bring in supplies for the boat tour is that it also opens up other opportunities to consider accessibility issues We have received numerous complaints and concerns over the last few years about the inaccessibility of the boat tour which is really an iconic experience, both in western Newfoundland and the province as a whole."

Bad for outdoor guides

The trail has quadrupled in width, according to Will and is now nearly fivemetres wide. Sheis seeing an immediate response from the visitorsshe guides through the area.

"It's all gravel. The boardwalks are gone, which I thought were protecting the ecosystem," she said."It's quite different.

"It feels definitely more like a road, and our clients booted it into the boat because they weren't enjoying the natural area like they normally do. It definitely felt more like a highway to get from the parking lot to the boat."

A challenging trail

Wheaton says the Western Brook Pond trail can be a problematic area and the trail upgrade will also allow longevity, instead of having to do annual repairs.

"The work that we have done in the last year was meant to address some of those sustainability issues with regard to the trail itself," Wheaton said.

"They were also meant to address some of the environmental concerns. So for example it may have been the thinking at the time that a boardwalk would help to protect the bog there, but in fact as I mentioned it was sinking into the bog."

From there visitors would cause their own damage.

"It could also not accommodate the amount of pedestrian use. So oftentimes you were seeing pedestrians forced to step off of the boardwalk into the bog," Wheaton said.

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