St John's Newfoundland in September
 

We will be in Newfoundland for 10 days in late August/early September. In St John's for half, at least. We were considering going to Gros Morne for the other half. We would like to do some hiking through mountainy areas. I'm concerned about the amount of time spent driving though in order to go out there. Would there be any similar mountain/cliff type areas closer to St John's?

Google the East Coast Trail. Lots and lots of cliffs and amazing scenery. It’s not mountainous but there are plenty of ups and downs. https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fod...e9a6b13ff.jpeg
From the trail just north of St John’s.

PS we were in your situation in September 2016. We flew between St John’s and Deer Lake which is very close to Gros Morne and then home from Deer Lake. The extra flight costs about $200 per person.

Of course this doesn’t work for you if you are driving to Newfoundland.

We looked into flying into Deer Lake, driving to St John's, and then flying home from St John's. The flight cost difference wasn't bad but the car rental fee was horrendous.

That sounds like you would have had a large drop off fee for renting the car in Deer Lake and returning it in St John’s. We rented two different cars - one in St John’s and one in Deer Lake. Both were reasonalby priced. I’ve done the East Coast Trail a few times and sometimes we don’t even rent a car. We taki a taxi to the start of a trail and then either hike back to St John’s or take another taxi back.

You might enjoy Skerwink Trail just outside Port Rexton, a scenic 3-mile loop ranked among the top trails in North America. It's a moderate to difficult hike, with stairs along the steeper parts and a few lookout benches that allow you to enjoy the spectacular coastal views along Trinity Bay.

Boots

The Fox Island Trail, just down the road from Skerwink, is also beautiful. However, both of these places are 3 hours drive outside St. John's, while the East Coast Trail is very close by.
And, as a final caveat, Only Gros Morne will give you the feeling of mountain scenery. But, as you know, you will basically spend most of a day (at least 6 hours) driving from one to the other. And do NOT try driving after dark; the moose danger is a real thing.

If you do decide to visit Gros Morne, there are a lot of great trails in the park. Gros Morne mountain itself is a spectacular hike, but three things come to mind if you want to hike it:

- Pay very close attention to the weather; Parks Canada cautions climbers to avoid the mountain in low cloud cover or fog. Once you get to the top, you'll understand that it can be a dangerous nightmare in reduced visibility. If you have a window of, say, three to five days in the area, you can likely pick a cloudless day.

- Allow eight hours for the entire hike. You may be able to do it more quickly, but eight is a safe planning figure. (My wife and I, in our sixties, spent eight hours the first time we climbed and seven and a half the second.) The corollary to that is: start early enough to be back in the parking lot before dark.

- Carry food and water. We drank two litres each when we hiked on a warm, sunny September day, and just over a litre each on a rainy September day.

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That sounds great, thank you! ( I looked it up and the pictures look great!)

That sounds great! Thank you!

Whether we do it this trip or not, I definitely want to go to Gros Morne. I was concerned about that hike though. Some reviews make it sound brutal, while others don't. Its the scramble/almost vertical rock climbing type part that has concerned me. Is it really that bad?

Scramble yes. Vertical rock climbing no. This is hard to answer without knowing what you're used to. Start early, take your time and you should be fine. There are lots of people who do it that sure don’t look like hikers.

Great, thanks!

If you haven't already booked your car, it pays to check all the rental companies, some of them have really high prices for dropping cars in Deer Lake others much less. There are huge differences between companies, it seemed to me that some companies just don't want to have drop offs in Deer Lake so they have high costs to dissuade people from doing that. We rented from Budget in June 2016, and paid approx. $250 drop off fee, it made sense to us, we saved the cost of gas driving back across the island, and the cost of accommodation in St John's for the night before our flight out. Accommodation is much cheaper on the west coast. We stayed in Rocky Harbour at Bottom Brook Cottages, and easily drove to the 70km to Deer Lake Airport from Rocky Harbour for our flight home.
There are many trails at Gros Morne other than the mountain hike.
You really shouldn't miss the Western Brook Boat tour it was one of the highlights of our trip