Revisit Newfoundland's ATV Trails In This Trail Riding Video

Every time we see a video of Newfoundland it accelerates our desire to visit the territory. From woods to fire roads to water crossings to rock crawling and everything in-between, it seems like you can do a boatload of it in the eastern Canadian Province. EastCoastATV-- our perpetual drool-inducer when it comes to seeing the Newfoundland sights from behind the screen-- has put together a collection of their riding highlights from 2023. Their rides cover everything from the beaches to the mountains, and we can't help but fawn over how incredible the scenery and trail systems are.

Transcript

0:00

Hi Everyone, and welcome to the first video of my 2023 Crossing Newfoundland By ATV video series.

0:07

In July of 2023 we did a west coast trip and took the ferry from Nova Scotia to Port Aux Basques. From there we rode to Stephenville, Corner Brook, Lomond Lodge, Howley, Deer Lake, Cloudy Pond, Robinsons, and back to Port Aux Basques.

0:23

It was a fantastic trip, but it wasn't without its challenges. There were two major washouts to navigate and on two different nights we were forced to make last minute changes to our original itinerary due to heavy rain and a serious mechanical breakdown.

0:35

But it didn't matter because the scenery was beautiful as ever with beaches, lakes, mountains, and some of the most beautiful sun sets you'll ever see.

0:44

By the end of the trip we rode over 1000 km and spent 9 days in Newfoundland, not including the ferry over and back.

0:50

This trip is getting more and more popular. Over 2500 ATVs and Side by Sides took the ferry to Newfoundland last year (2023) to do this trip.

0:58

We were surprised how many people we saw that were taking part in the same adventure. All of the people we stopped to talk to told us they were using my website and YouTube videos to help them plan their trip.

1:08

If you're interested in planning a trip like this - go to my website CrossingNewfoundlandByATV.com.

1:14

Everything you need to know to plan this trip is there. This map and my downloadable GPS tracks you can follow will be your single biggest resource for planning your trip.

1:22

I also have a Facebook Page with many tips and up to date information on trail conditions and of course my YouTube Channel.

1:29

There are several Newfoundland video series from past trips that you can watch to get ideas of what you're going to see and to help plan your itineraries.

1:37

Creating these YouTube videos and maintaining the website is a lot of work. If you like these videos please do me a favor and click the like and subscribe buttons.

Road Trip/Ferry Crossing

1:45

Day 1 -The Newfoundland Ferry Crossing Despite having done this trip so many times there always seems to be that last minute organizing of gear to figure out where it's all gonna go.

1:56

So, lucky for us Duane bought a new machine this year and he had a bit of extra space.

2:02

Darryl - "Wow, that's a bus". This is quite an upgrade in size from the X3 that Duane had last year. It's the Defender Ltd 6x6 with two load out racks on the back with a pop-up tent on the top.

2:13

Patrick - "Look at the size of the box on that thing, man!" And Duane let Darryl and I utilize some of that space.

2:25

Patrick - "I like those bags you have back there." Duane - "Oh, the YETI bags?" One of the nice things about taking a Side by Side on a trip like this as opposed to an ATV is that there is extra space should somebody have a breakdown and you need to take another person along to finish the trip out.

2:41

Which may have happened on this trip. Unless you actually live in Newfoundland and you're planning on doing the Crossing Newfoundland By ATV trip you're beginning your adventure with a Road Trip.

2:52

Which isn't a bad thing because you get to drive through Cape Breton on your way to the ferry terminal in North Sydney, Nova Scotia.

2:57

The highway is close to the Atlantic Ocean on that drive so there's lots of beautiful scenery to take in before you even get the ferry itself.

3:04

We did a West Coast Trip this year that means we took the ferry that left at midnight going to Port Aux Basques rather than the one that left at 5:30 p.m. going to Argentia.

3:12

That's a 6- or 7-hour ferry ride versus 16. So that means we arrived pretty early for our ferry crossing.

3:19

But I would rather be a lot early than one minute late.

3:27

Once we offloaded the machines at A&L Parking we spent a few minutes getting acquainted again with everyone then I started passing out the new sweaters we ordered this year.

3:35

Everyone seemed pretty pleased with them and I want to special thanks to Jonathan Anderson at FundyTextiles who we ordered the sweaters from.

3:42

These sweaters were a nice purchase. I use mine all the time.

3:50

Patrick - "You have yours on" Darryl - "Yessir.." At this point is was only about 7:30 p.m., in the evening and we had lots of time to get ready and take our time packing our gear into the machines.

4:01

The Ferry left about 11:30 p.m. You have to check-in two hours early which means you don't have to get there till after 9 p.m. so..

4:10

We were in no rush at all to drive across the street from the parking lot here to get over and check in at the ferry terminal So we decided to take a few minutes to line our machines up so we could get a nice picture of them while they were nice and clean and shiny still before we got on the trail in NL.

4:24

Well, we decided it was time to get going. For those of you that are familiar the Channel, or those of you that have done this trip you may or may not be aware how to enter Marin Atlantic check-in area.

4:34

There's basically two ways to do it. 1 - drive to Marine Atlantic with your trucks and trailers, check-in..

4:42

Then you drive across the street to A&L Parking, offload, and drive back in your machines to the back gate of Marine Atlantic.

4:49

That way it minimizes any road riding that you have to do. The second way is to offload at A&L then drive to Marine Atlantic and check-in get in line to the boat.

4:58

Which is the method we're using right now.

5:18

This trip isn't only the "ATV Trip of a Lifetime" it's like Christmas for grown-ups. Once you check-in at the terminal and you're waiting to get on that ferry you feel like kids that have been waiting to see Santa all year.

5:30

This year there was a guy that was waiting in a car to board and he got out and came over to me. Shook my hand and said he did this ATVTrip because he found my YouTube videos and website.

5:39

He was so grateful and said he can't wait to do the trip again.

5:52

Well, the just announced it's time to board the boat. This is one of the funnest things to do of this whole trip.

6:00

I know as much fun as it is to be driving the trails and seeing all the beautiful spots in NL - when you get to drive your ATV or SxS onto the boat

6:07

It's just a unique experience because usually you're doing it in a motor vehicle like a car or truck.

6:16

Because the ferry leaves so late we weren't up very long after we got on board. We got up early the next morning and had breakfast on the boat.

6:34

Well, some of us had breakfast on the boat anyway. It was really foggy when we pulled in you could barely see anything.

Arrive NL

6:40

Sometimes it's like that when you pull into Port Aux Basques. Usually when you get on the trail and your 10 km up the road or so, it's nice and clear.

6:49

Which is pretty much what happened this day.

7:05

Once you're off the ferry your adventure begins. You drive through the parking lot where normal traffic goes but before you leave the terminal yard..

7:13

There's a marked trail that you hop on to just as all the other vehicles are leaving the area. It takes you along the side of the Provincial Highway.

7:18

It ends near the Irving Gas. We always pull into there to get organized before we hit the trail.

7:25

It's conveniently located across the street from the gas station. Some of the guys grabbed a coffee. Darryl got his gear together, all of his camera gear.

7:35

Darryl - "a thousand little things to loose" My steering was off a little bit so Bruce took a look at my tie rods and noticed one was out a bit so he adjusted my alignment for me.

7:46

Duane - "I think sometimes Patrick you're just doing that for content!" (laughs)

7:55

So after about 15 or 20 minutes or so we decided to get rolling. and Port Aux Basques, Thank You very much! You're allowed to drive on a lot of paved roads here now with ATVs.

Trail Start

8:05

It's not far to get to the train here... This is the start of the Trail. Or it's the end if you're going from the East to the West.

8:12

But for us it's gonna be the Start, and the End because we're just doing a west coast trip this year.

8:28

I've mentioned this in previous videos from other years but if you haven't seen those and you're new to the channel... One of the things I love about the west coast tour is that as soon as you get off the boat this is some of the scenery that you see.

8:39

You're along the coast almost immediately and there's beautiful fields and ocean. You can't beat this kind of scenery.

9:08

This section here that we're going through is all washed out Luckily, we made it through. It's all part of railbed. There was a big storm from the year prior, in the fall.

9:20

And we could drive through this section right here, the water was only a few inches deep.

9:25

It is salt water so keep that in mind. This should all be fixed by 2024.

9:31

If it's not, keep an eye on the tide. If it's deep you're not going to want to go this way. You're gonna want to back track and go up the highway. We end having to do that and I'll show you here in a minute.

Trail Closure

9:55

I knew about this trail closure before we got to Newfoundland. I had already mapped out an alternate route

10:01

I shared for others to use on my Crossing Newfoundland By ATV website and my Facebook page. We just wanted to come see it in person.

10:07

You could see tracks of where people were driving around the water hole but as it turns out it was a sinkhole bubbling up from underneath

10:14

We drove around down in the beach area to see if we could find a spot to get back up on the railbed

10:26

This exploring and us being stopped here and having to back track probably added half and hour or so to our day

10:31

Maybe more but we didn't care. The ferry gets in so early when you take the overnight.. It gets in at 7 a.m. so there's tons of time for us to get where we were going for the end of the day.

11:04

We couldn't find a way around. We ended up going to this beautiful section of the beach for a few minutes and taking some nice pictures then we decided to go back and let everybody else know there was no way through here

11:13

Now we have to backtrack to the highway. It's about 3 km back to the hwy, and 3 km back again...

11:19

And then we had to go through JTCheeseman Park.

11:56

While we were backtracking we were talking on our headsets and trying to decide if we wanted to go up to the Tabletop or not.

12:01

You can't really see in the video but it looked clouded-in

12:06

Once we got back on the highway and we got through JTCheeseman Park

12:11

We decided to give it a try. It was a little fogged in at the top but we were hoping it would be clear by the time we got there because the view is so beautiful it's worth it if it's clear.

Table Top Mountain

12:41

This trail that we're on now is the trail to the Table Top It's about 5 km long and it just progressively gets steeper

12:49

Until you get to the peak and you want to be in 4 wheel drive, if you have 4 wheel drive.

13:00

There are sections with a lot of loose rock. Some years you just don't know how much rock is gonna be on the trail

13:06

If you spinning around and it's really steep you could get yourself into some trouble So make sure you're in 4 wheel drive.

13:23

You can see in this video here how steep it's getting

13:35

This is one of the steepest sections Bruce was trying to avoid a big rock that he didn't want to hit and he went a little bit too far to the right and there was some loose gravel

13:43

It pulled him down, his right front wheel over the edge and he couldn't back out.

13:48

I had to get around him here and give him a tug with the winch to get him out

14:06

Near the top we came across a caribou who was pretty interested in us It took him quite a while before he decided to leave

14:14

I inched towards him so not to scare him.

14:27

Once you get to the top it's surprisingly flat and pretty easy going and the views are spectacular.

14:34

I will give a tip for beginners: If you're on the ground level like the T'Railway and you're looking to come up here And if it looks clouded in.. don't bother coming up.You can't even see the trail when you get up here.

14:54

This was Josh's first trip with us.

15:00

When we first got to the top the view from here was clear That mist there, it rolled in very very fast.

15:06

Tony - "She's socked right in"...

15:15

This is normally what it looks like on a clear day from up here

15:27

Those of you who follow my Crossing Newfoundland By ATV Facebook Page may remember a live stream I did while I was up here when all this fog was moving in

15:34

Just as were getting ready to leave Wynn notice he was having a problem with his quick release steering wheel

15:39

He has an optional aftermarket wheel that you can take off. It makes it harder to steal.

15:45

It wasn't locking in place properly. After a few minutes and a few tries we got it working.

15:58

We wasted enough time up there and decided to get back down and start moving towards where we were gonna go for lunch.

16:06

You can see how steep and rocky it is. Luckily it's much easier going down than it is going up.

16:18

Get used to that view if you haven't done this trip before. There's a lot of sections where alder brush is grown up quite tall and several sections of the trail especially on the west coast

Hidden Lunch Spot

16:29

Instead of stopping under the bridge we normally go we decided to find a new place We didn't have to drive far to find this hidden gem

16:50

Duane - "Automatic lighter finally kicked the bucket"