Taken 2007 October 17 from the Polletts Cove Trail near the summit of Black Brook Mountain
GPS 46°52.8??'N 60°43.6??'W
Wednesday was a slight improvement over Tuesday: there was no rain. It remained very windy and cool (cold better describes the temperature with the wind chill factored in—I needed a tuque, gloves, and a heavy sweatshirt on my hike down the Pollets Cove Trail and still the wind penetrated). I had no intention of going to the end of the trail—it was too late in the season to consider doing that—but I just had to satisfy my curiosity about how hard this trail really is. So I hiked to the top of the first mountain along the trail in forty minutes of slow-moving hiking (and sixty-seven minutes of clock time) and started down the other side; as it appeared that I was going to have to climb all the way down and then all the way up again, and as I was feeling quite chilled, I decided to turn around at that point and wait until next year before trying again; however, nothing I saw up to this point indicated that the trail was an impossible one for me, as I had been led to believe.
On the way back, this is the view of the coast towards Pleasant Bay that I saw from the top of the mountain just before starting down. There was little sun to light things up, sadly, but there were some fall colours to be seen nonetheless, though mostly yellows and tans, with an occasional orange.
Wreck Cove Point at the base of MacKenzies Mountain is the point sticking out in the far distance; Pleasant Bay lies down the MacKenzies Mountain shore out of view here at the far left of the photo. The mountain in the middle ground at the left, below which one can see the road to Red River and Pleasant Bay winding, is Baldy. Gampo Abbey, a Buddhist monastery, can be barely seen at the centre of the photo (look for where the road appears to end (but does not—it continues on for another 1.4 km (0.9 mi)), beneath which is a stand of dark green evergreens and move your eyes diagonally down that stand to the right and you will make out the abbey’s red-roofed buildings).
[2012] Since this hike, I haven’t made it back to the Polletts Cove Trail; I regret I haven’t made a subsequent attempt, but it requires warm weather, an early start, and a long period of daylight, which means staying overnight in Pleasant Bay in the late spring or early summer, which, with all the music then available along the Cèilidh Trail, hasn’t fit into my schedule in the intervening years. But it’s still a hike I’d very much like to take—the photos I have seen of Polletts Cove are stunningly gorgeous and I have heard only wonderful reports from those who have made it!