From Saint Pierre we really want to visit the surrounding green area during our daytrip and we settled on the The Valley of the Seven Ponds. There are a few reasons, it seems well maintained and marked, it has geocaches and it is close to the downtown area and no taxi is needed. We find the entrance easily and soon hike on the beautiful trail up to the official starting point of the Valley of the Seven Ponds trail.
It is a short climb to the Belvedere de L’Anse a Pierre a large parking, viewpoint and picnic area. It has some great views of Saint Pierre and the harbor and with no one else around we can enjoy the location for a while and even find our first cache in Saint Pierre.
And now it is time to finally follow established hiking trail to a few etangs, ponds, with the trail leading to Etang du Telegraph, Telegraph Pond. It continues the upward trend that we observed from the harbor, we go up and then up again through a tundra like enviroment interspersed with barren rocks.
The vegetation is quite interesting as we look for berries, no such luck at least not for something edible that we know is edible.
And then finally we reach the ridge and after a good bye glance to Saint Pierre it is time to enter the hinterlands of the island.
The trail takes us now on a plateau with some great views all around us, we can see many ponds and of course the sea, it is probably difficult to find a place on the island where you cannot see the sea from.
But a good candidate is any forest and soon enter a dwarf forest, with the trees being quite small due to winds and general climate. It is also quite dense but luckily the trail is well maintained as we pass through this interior forest.
We cross a few flowing creeks but at least there are stones set to form a bridge, probably easier than building a bridge? Here we also see our first interesting bird, a Common Yellowthroat. Usually they are quite skulking but here it was simply surprised to see any mammals around.
And then we see our goal in front of us, the Telegraph Pond. It is a hop, skip and a jump away and soon we are on the shore enjoying the great views. It feels like we are really far away from everything, even though Saint Pierre is just one hour hike from us.
There are no waterbirds here, even though we had some hopes, but at least the views are great with creeks flowing and ponds extending in all directions. We follow carefully the trail through the marshy area and arrive at an intersection. Both directions take us back to the city but one takes longer and we do not have that much time so we choose the faster branch.
But before returning we trek to the shore of Trip Pond which is the twin pond of Telegraph Pond. There are some scenic photo opportunities here also and we enjoy the stop and even find another cache.
From here to our surprise the trail becomes a boardwalk, we think the is the actual Seven Ponds Trail and we came in on a branch trail. Or maybe this passes an area that is even more marshy, who knows? We will not complain about this of course….
It is a long boardwalk and we even find a few more interesting birds liek Boreal Chickadees and dark Eyed Juncos. The Chickadees especially are quite interested in us and watch us carefully as we pass.
Then there is a stretch with boardwalk and then they are alternating quite often. On the way we find the last cache of our hike, a nicely hidden one and also find out that we have chosen correctly, it takes more time than expected to return to the city.
And then there is another intersection, one takes us back to the overlook and the other goes to the city directly so we choose the city one as we prefer to descend in a different point than we started to explore more.
The trail has some nice views of the abandoned island of L’Ile aux Marins which supposedly can be reached by a ferry that runs very often, nothing like that in sight though. It also follows a fence protecting the water supply of the city and we start to become concerned, is this trail official or just a backdoor entrance to the water processing plant?
Soon we become more convinced it is an official trail as it levels out and the water supply is left behind us. The views are also becoming spectacular as the harbor and the city slowly enter our view.
And then it is just a short descent towards seemingly a house but it is actually a trailhead as marked by a very official sign. We are happy about that as there are two people looking at us like we are aliens but they don’t say anyting so we re-enter the city for one more hour of exploration before returning to Canada.
