Meat Cove Mountain and the adjacent Highlands

After the photos on the beach, I drove up the Meat Cove Beach Road to its end on the Meat Cove Road, turned left, and drove a short ways before stopping for views of Meat Cove Mountain and the surrounding Cape Breton Highlands, as seen from the Meat Cove Road. The photos on this page were taken then.

Photo #1 is a wide-angled shot of the view I had where I stopped the car at the side of the road. The distinctive shape of Meat Cove Mountain looms high above the village at the centre of the photo. The ridge at the far left continues to the south beyond Meat Cove Mountain, forming its south summit, as seen here and here. The col between that ridge and Meat Cove Mountain (and from there both the southern and the northern summits of Meat Cove Mountain) is reached by climbing up the Meat Cove Mountain Trail, which follows an unnamed brook whose general course can be seen as a line through the trees; although a very stiff climb, at least for me, the views once up there are fantastic. At the far right, another ridge is seen which belongs to the massif at the west of the village; Meat Cove Brook curves to the left around the foot of Meat Cove Mountain.

Photo #2 is a telephoto view of the rock face at the apparent northern summit of Meat Cove Mountain. I say “apparent” because the actual summit is well behind this rock face, which hides it from below. Anyone who has hiked down from the northern summit to the rock face will know that that part of the trail descends, which is confirmed by this backwards view from the rock face looking up towards the actual summit.

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Photo #3 is a telephoto view of the general course of the Meat Cove Mountain Trail as it follows along and above the unnamed brook which descends through this area; it is sometimes dry in summer. This view shows a large boulder protruding from the edge of the ridge right of centre; the forces of erosion are visible all along this section of the ridge (and at the far left as well). Fortunately, the trail from the col to the ridge is well beyond this section of the cliff.

Photo #4 looks south at the foot of Meat Cove Mountain, descending from the left, where the Meat Cove Brook curves left around both the slope descending from the right and the ridge across the centre, both of which latter are part of the massif that runs on the west side of the Meat Cove Brook valley, which extends to the brook’s source in bogs on the plateau east of the High Capes. The multiplicity of folds and slopes gives the Highlands at Meat Cove a good part of their great beauty. As I was taking these photos, however, the clouds were moving in; the sky is white to the south and a big white cloud is seen at the left of photo #3 starting to cover the ridge. After I drove back up above the village to the lodge where I stayed, I watched a heavy bank of fog roll in over the western Highlands and down into the valley, completely hiding both the Highlands and the village in a thick pea soup, something I’d never seen there before. No sunset this night!