As we ascended the 299 and hit the entrance to the park's southern entrance, the Gaspésie National Park, I stopped the car and took the amazing picture you see in my video. I really thought about Sir William Logan's expedition and his trek on foot through the park, starting at Cap Chat through the Park national de la Gaspésie all the way to the mouth of the Grand Cascapédia River.
Reading from Tour de le Gaspésie, Gaspe the Romantic "Revisited".
The expedition of 1844, which Logan of course undertook with his friend and guide John Basque, departed by canoe from Cap Chat. The young geologist and team travelled through the deeply carved Cap Chat valley until they were forced to abandon their canoes and begin breaking trail on foot with heavy packs on their backs as they went.
Among the many peaks discovered of more than 4,000 feet in height, Mount Logan was named in his honour despite his protest.
By July 18 he had ascended the summit named in his honour, Mount Logan, and wrote in his journal what he witnessed...
"We have had a grand day on the peak... the panoramic displayed is one of the grandest description. In the northern half of the circle, the waters of the St Lawrence dotted with its ships and fishing boats... unaided vision could plainly distinguish the lighthouse of the Pointe des Monts, some fifty miles off... in the mist of the distance we thought we could discover the Island of Anticosti, one hundred miles away... to the Eastward a confusion of mountains and ravines fills up several degrees of the circle, and one summit, which exhibited a patch of snow, we supposed might be higher than the point we stood upon... southward a sea of parallel undulating ridges... and through one gap, which was probably the valley of a south-flowing river, we distinguished a faint blue horizontal line, which we fancied might be New Brunswick. We have placed the Union Jack Captain Douglas gave us..."
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