Our first stop today was a short hike out to White Point, which is outside of Cape Breton National Park. White Point is a treeless expanse populated by sea lions and sea birds, including cormorants. There was a tiny cemetary there, with a marker for an Unknown Soldier.
Mica Point is in the boundarires of Cape Breton. It starts out as forest trail, but it climbs a short ways and enters a taiga landscape, where the tallest trees are about waist high. The trail wanders back into the interior where it ends at a mica mine. Frontiersmen apparently tried to mine here, though they must have been hoping to find something more valuable than mica. Shards of mica lay scattered about the hill, which created a bit of sparkle to the landscape. The hiking trail is broad and wide for about half of the distance, then it narrows down into a path with rocks and roots.
The sign at the Mica Hill trailhead read: This breathtaking trail winds through Acadian mixed forest and stunted taiga as it climbs to the wind-swept highlands plateau. It offers 360 degree views spanning the barrens, the dramatic Aspy fault, coastal villages far below and mountains reaching the most northern tip of Cape Breton.
This was the trailmap posted on the Mica Hill sign board.
Tenerife Mountain was renamed Theodore Fricker Mountain. The trail is short but extremely steep. Basically, it goes straight up the backside of the mountain without the
benefit of any switchbacks. The mountainside was covered with loose stones, so I kept slipping as I tried to climb. It was an exhausting hike, despite being just a short distance, and I was covered in sweat
when we finally reached the top. The view up there is quite nice, but we also saw what looked like storm clouds headed our way, and I didn't want to climb down that steep hillside in wet conditions, the trail
was already challenging enough. So I snapped a few photographs and we headed back down. There were some ropes to hang onto, which helped on the descent, yet I still slipped three or four times. We did not have
hiking poles on this trip, and they would have been quite useful here. It never did rain on us, though when we checked in at Mountain View Cottage (a short distance down the road), the proprietor asked if we
had been caught in the cloudburst. We must have just missed it.
Map showing the short but steep route up the back of Theodore Fricker Mountain.
Panorama Photos
