Passing through a landscape of great beauty, ruggedness, and variety, the Avalon Peninsula’s East Coast Trail follows the most easterly coastline in North America, from St. John’s in the north to Admiral’s Cove in the south. As the trail rises and falls along the headlands, it traverses barrens dotted with delicate lichen gardens and damp, brooding spruce woods overgrown with old-man’s beard. Both whales and icebergs are frequently sighted off the coast.

Some stretches of the East Coast Trail are easy to hike; others are difficult. You’ll walk along high cliffs, ford streams, scramble through great boulder strewn gullies, and skirt deep coves rimmed with rocky beaches.

Two lighthouses within the first quarter mile alert vessels to the presence of North America’s easternmost tip. The remains of shipwrecks just off shore testify to the hazards of this rocky, windswept shore.