Views from the Indian Brook Road

When the Gairloch Mountain Road reaches its junction with the Indian Brook Road, the latter is clearly the more travelled road and is in much better shape. It climbs smartly to the top of a long ridge parallel to and overlooking the Middle River Valley; from that ridge, one has a good view of the Cape Breton Highlands on the far side of the valley. I had long been seeking such a vantage point in the area and this is definitely the best I’ve located to date. At the north end of the ridge, a farm is still active and that means open fields across which the good views are found in forested areas like this one. This vantage point is not so elevated that one can actually see much down into the valley—it’s more a case of seeing over the valley—but still considerably more of the Highlands can be seen than from in the valley. The photos on this page were taken from beside that farm.

Photo #1 is a wide-angled view, framed by trees on either side, looking across the Middle River Valley to the Cape Breton Highlands on the east side of the valley. Indian Brook lies below the ridge about 1.5 km (0.9 mi) off, but its course is not obvious to me in this view. Nor is the Middle River West Road visible; it would be below the line of trees in the middle ground.

The next five photos form a connected and overlapping panorama at the same telephoto scale, looking left to right across the section of the Cape Breton Highlands seen in photo #1. Photo #2 looks to the northeast towards Upper Middle River, where Midway Motors, the Dodge/Chrysler dealer, is located along the Cabot Trail. I take the diagonal gash at the left of the photo as Captains Brook, which empties into Garry Brook, which in turn empties into the Middle River south of the dealership. The cleared patch of land in from the right edge is along Garry Road, which turns to the north there and continues along the base of the Highlands.

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Photo #3 continues the panorama to the right. The cleared field on Garry Road is now in from the left edge of the photo and the valley one sees at the right of the photo has been carved by what the topographical map labels as the Leonard MacLeod Brook. If I remember correctly, the signage at the point where the brook crosses the Cabot Trail on a curve just north of the community of Middle River names it simply as MacLeods Brook. In Google Earth, this brook can be seen continuing a considerable distance back into the Highlands, draining a boggy area the topographical map labels as the Little Barrens.

Photo #4 looks to the right of photo #3 at the MacIntyre Road area, a road which leads up into the lower Highlands. Further to the right, one can see the roof of a building which magnification shows is that of a barn; the dot of white beside it is a house. I am not sure just where these buildings are located, but I’d guess on the west side of the Middle River.

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Photo #5 continues to the right, bringing another complexly folded area into view at the centre and right. This is the area drained by the McDonald [sic] Brook and its tributaries; it crosses the Cabot Trail between the communities of Middle River and Lower Middle River and empties into the Middle River just south of the mouth of Indian Brook in West Middle River.

Photo #6 completes the panorama, bringing us around again to an area of cleared land, doubtless the scene of not too distant past logging activity. Having grown up along the St Lawrence River, a land that is mostly flat with some gentle rolling hills and where the foothills of the Adirondacks are an hour’s drive away, I have always admired terrain such as this, with its complicated system of folds carved by streams descending its slopes. It is one of the principal reasons I am constantly drawn to the grandeur and beauty of the Cape Breton Highlands. I hope you have enjoyed these views of a tiny segment of them.