Looking up the Cabot Trail
from the highest look-off on North Mountain

The view in photo #1 is another “old friend”, where I stop each time I pass by: the first look-off below the summit of North Mountain on the Cabot Trail. From the edge of the look-off furthest away from the Cabot Trail, photo #1 looks up towards the summit of North Mountain, which is beyond and behind the sloping ridge at the left of the photo. But there are stupendous views from this look-off in all directions; on a lovely day such as this one, one can see out to Aspy Bay from this look-off. For, indeed, the weather had become perfect for photography, with all haze banished.

Photo #2 is a close-up version of the view above; how interesting it is to contrast this late spring scene with this gorgeous wintry scene, taken only three months earlier from the middle of the Cabot Trail when the look-off was blocked with snow: the cliff shrouded in snow is, of course, the one in the right foreground of photo #2, seen more fully in the wider-angle view of photo #1. The guardrails so visible here are completely hidden by the piled-up snow in the wintry scene.

This beautiful wintry view was shot from beyond the look-off a ways further up the Cabot Trail and therefore from a rather different angle, but the cliff at its right is readily recognizable as the cliff face in the upper centre of photo #2.

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While at this look-off, a few minutes taken to walk up along the Cabot Trail and get a close-up look at the rock faces exposed when it was carved out of this terrain will reward your time and effort. At the same time, on the other side of the road in the ravine far below, you can trace the course of MacGregor Brook, shown in photo #3, which carries the run-off from this side of North Mountain into the North Aspy River, which flows through the rift valley between North Mountain and South Mountain formed by the Aspy Fault. The boulders in its course bear witness that the flow of MacGregor Brook in this view must surely be greatly diminished from what it must have been during the spring run-offs as the snow melted and the April showers fell.

The lovely view in photo #4 is to the southeast from the look-off: it shows a small portion of South Mountain across the Aspy Fault, one whose delightful curves, knolls, and ridges were carved by streams running into what The Nova Scotia Atlas dubs the Little Southwest Brook (a curious name as its flow from South Mountain is mostly to the north, though it turns to the northwest as it descends into the Aspy Valley), which also flows into the North Aspy River a very short way downstream from the mouth of MacGregor Brook.

As the Cabot Trail descends North Mountain, four more look-offs below this one offer additional gorgeous views of the Aspy Valley and of South Mountain on its far side. I was in a hurry this day and did not stop to photograph them, though in retrospect, I wish I had as my collection of photos of this area do not have any that are as clear and haze-free as those of this gorgeous day. However, as subsequent photos in this essay will attest, I did not waste this wonderful weather!