Cape Mabou from the Smithville Road—Part One

At the point where I stopped for the last photo on the previous page, the views of Cape Mabou are amazing. The first three photos on this page form a connected panorama from left to right across the visible portion of Cape Mabou.

Photo #1 looks at the edge of Cape Mabou which runs from Hawleys Hill at the eastern end of the Northeast Mabou Road to Glenora Falls; the Glenora Falls road which leads to the summit of Cape Mabou passes to the right of the “knob” seen at the far right. The evergreens at the far end of the field in the foreground hide a lot of the terrain. Glendyer Brook flows right-to-left across the full width of this photo on the far side of those trees in a fairly shallow depression below them, where numerous fields and pastures are found; the Cèilidh Trail (Highway 19) runs along a ridge across and above the Glendyer Brook valley that is also hidden by those trees.

Photo #2 continues the panorama to the right, with some overlap with photo #1, looking primarily at the Glenora Falls area. The waterfall which gives the area its name is at the base of the “knob” on its right side. The Glenora Falls Road climbs through the highlands up to the most remote prominence visible at the centre of the photo, where it ends at the Cape Mabou Road, which runs across the Cape Mabou plateau from the MacDonalds Glen Road (about halfway between Northeast Mabou and Mabou Coal Mines) to the Sight Point Road west of Inverness, passing by the Community Pastures along the way. The ridge at the far right, which descends right-to-left to the centre of the photo, is on the near side of the Cèilidh Trail and therefore not properly part of Cape Mabou, though in this view, it is superimposed on the highlands and hard to tell apart from the more distant features; it runs to the northeast towards Riverville more or less parallel to Cape Mabou.

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Photo #3, taken further south along the road on a short walk from the car to obtain an unobstructed view, continues the panorama to the right, with some overlap with photo #2, showing the Cape Mabou Highlands above the Cèilidh Trail between Glenora Falls and Riverville, again, nearly indistinguishable from the nearer ridge. The MacLennan Road runs into a valley to the right of the “knob” seen at the right.

The distance to the highlands from the Smithville Road varies from 2.5 km (1.6 mi) to 3.5 km (2.2 mi), depending on which area one is considering, but the distance is far enough it could mislead one’s impressions of the state of the colours on the highlands, particularly in these relatively wide-angled views. Especially in photo #1 but in the other two photos as well, the highlands appear to have a significant number of unchanged hardwoods, still showing green leaves. Considerably more colour is visible on the nearer ridge, but green is still evident there too.

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Photos #4 and #5 are telephoto views for the area seen in photo #3. They bring the hillsides seen above into much sharper focus and confirm the general impression: the nearer ridge is considerably closer to peak than the more distant highlands where, at least on the higher slopes, half or more of the trees appear to be green. The riot of colour in photo #5 on the nearer ridge still shows some green, but the great majority of the trees have changed.