Big Pond Wetland
Access Information.
There are three potential access points. The easiest is to just drive up Hilton Road. You can pull off road anywhere in vicinity of 43° 46.6098' N, 66° 7.8033' W. From here you can just look south to see Big Pond and its shingle beach, the drumlins and an end of the fresh bog wetland. No hiking involved. The others have good parking but require some moderately difficult walking. The Big Pond end is best accessed from parking at the end of Ocean View Drive, off of Hilton Road. Park at 43* 46.4092' N, 66° 7.5369' W. There are ATV trails leading down the hill to the shingle beach and drumlins. The south end of the bog is best accessed from the Coast Guard Towers site off of Chebogue Point Road. Park at 43° 44.6531' N, 66° 7.3131' W. Walk down the road to the right, cross fence into pasture, walk to bottom and head north along coast. There is an ATV trail from one end to the other so if you want to walk the whole coast (about 3 km) you can. Just have good walking boots as it is not a graded trail. Having a car at each end is a good idea if you plan this walk.
Description.
The Big Pond Wetland is a rather unusual coastal formation in Nova Scotia as it depended on a rare set of coastal form/process relationships coming together mostly involving glacial drumlins and coastal erosion.
First, we have to realize that coastal Nova Scotia, in the area between Pinkney's Point and the Cape Forchu basalt ridge, is highly populated with glacially deposited drumlins. Chebogue Point itself is a very large drumlin and therein lies the evolution of the story. You may want to reference Drumin and Interface earth caches which are part of the complex.
Drumlins are small to large glacial deposits of loose material - stones, rocks, sand, clay etc. and are mostly, but not always, tear dropped shape. We recognize them today because the ocean is eroding them leaving a cliff on edge most exposed to waves and, especially storm waves. They are retreating and in some places are just shallow rock islands at low tide.
Keep in mind that the western side of Chebogue Point is an exposed high energy coast open to the Gulf of Maine. Its force is quite clear, especially at the point itself where the drumlin material has been eroded back to the underlying Halifax/Goldville bedrock (all older than 500 million years) leaving substantial steep cliffs.
By some quirk if glacial deposition a second and smaller lineal drumlin was deposited starting about half way between the point and what became Big Pond. Its eastern side still exists about 200 meters or so away from the big Chebogue Point drumlin. We obviously don't have maps of the original configuration but remaining features indicate that the Big Pond Wetland may have originally been a Bay.
Then kicks in the common coastal geomorphology equation that "form equals process + materials." The processes here being a high energy coast and a south to north transportation chain. The materials being transported being the glacial till with all but the rocky portion washed out to sea. There are no beaches on this high energy coast.
As the big point erodes the material is driven north and closes off that end of the to become a wetland. The off shore drumlin is eroded and and the material is transported north to form the shingle beach (rocks) that creates Big Pond. Tidal water permeates the shingle beach so Big Pond has a gradient from saline to fresh.
The rest of the wetland is now a quite varied and rare coastal bog habitat worthy of further study and interpretation. It is certainly unique in the Municipality and perhaps the Province.
A study by East Coast Aquatics (pg 12 Boreal Salmon Inc, Chebogue Point Wetland Alteration) of a small portion on the wetland determined "that when compared with other wetlands in the province, the ecosystem services provided by the Wetland 1 were relatively high. These functions included songbird, raptor and mammal habitat; pollinator habitat; waterbird feeding habitat; and, aquatic invertebrate habitat. Wildlife observations of waterfowl, deer during field surveys support in part these function scores. The relatively lower functions for Wetland 1 when compared to other wetlands within Nova Scotia included water storage, phosphorous retention, anadromous fish habitat, and amphibian and turtle habitat. Overall Wetland 1 Ecological Condition score was high (8.26), reflective of minimal landscape development and natural condition of the wetland and surrounding area." It is also a major migratory bird landing area. After crossing the Gulf of Maine, Chebogue Point is the first solid land.
So, in visiting this coastal Nova Scotia Geocache you are seeing an unusual coastal wetland, an important wetland habitat and an evolving landscape. My question to you as an earth cache person is, given sea level rise predictions, what do you see as potential futures for this site in the next hundred years? There is no one right answer so feel free to speculate and be inventive.