Views from Black Point

Black Point is a massive protrusion of the Cape Breton Highlands whose 45° slope descends into Bay St Lawrence (the water) east of Meat Cove (the village), forming the eastern edge of Meat Cove (the water). The Meat Cove Road runs around Black Point more than 80 m (260 ft) above the waters directly below the road, offering fantastic views of Meat Cove and the terrain to the west. Photo #1 shows the marvellous view that greets one’s eyes there. Cape St Lawrence lies at the far right, 5 km (3.1 mi) away as the crow flies. Blackrock Point is seen at the far right in the middle ground, forming the western edge of Meat Cove (the water). The Meat Cove campground sits above the cliffs left of centre, its summery lush green grasses singed with frost. The trail to Cape St Lawrence and Lowland Cove ascends the cleft to the left of the campground to reach the ridge above, after which it descends the other side; the trail to the Meat Cove Look-Off, along the cliffs below that ridge but high up, follows the same route up the cleft, branching from it when the side trail to the look-off is reached. Hard to see here, but readily visible in the original, is the mouth of the unnamed brook that flows down the cleft, spilling over the cliffs in a cascade (look for the white rock at the water’s edge just below the campground and then look a short distance to the right and you will be able to make out the waterfall). The mouth of Meat Cove Brook lies between the grey cliffs to the left of the campground and the sheer cliffs directly below the campground.

The telephoto view in photo #2 brings the right portion of photo #1 into good detail. The frost-singed grass-covered slopes above Blackrock Point in the foreground descend to the waters of Bay St Lawrence; the peak at the far left, more than 240 m (787 ft) high, is known as Little Grassy, reached by a fairly short trail from the campground. The views from there are very fine and they improve as one descends the slope down to the smaller hump a third of the way down, as one is then further out in the water. The multiple colours in the rocks all along this coast and their 45° slant further out surely tell a geological story, if one were but knowledgeable enough to read it.

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Photo #3 was taken a ways beyond Black Point from part way down the road’s sharp descent into Meat Cove (the village). From this perspective, Little Grassy stands out far more sharply than it does from Black Point, giving a better appreciation of its height. The hill at the left, unnamed so far as I am aware, is on the northern side of the cleft through which the trail to Cape St Lawrence and Lowland Cove runs. The campground, to the right of the Meat Cove Road as it circles around the village up to the start of the trail, sits at the edge of the cliffs in the middle ground, with red-painted picnic tables still scattered across it; it is unoccupied on this October day after the end of the tourist season.

As at Capstick, the fall colours are clearly on their way, though a significant amount of green remains, particularly in the deciduous trees beyond the evergreens in the foreground, which are on the hillside above Meat Cove Brook down below. Below Little Grassy above Blackrock Point, many dead spruce trees, victims of the spruce bark bettle, lend their sad whitish-grey to the mix. The reds seen in the foreground at the bottom of the photo are from mountain ash trees; those at the far right seem to have lost their leaves, while those a bit better protected from the winds off the Gulf of St Lawrence still have theirs, though they are not the bright greens of earlier in the season.