Twelve-year-old Wayne, living in sight of the Rocky Mountains in Revelstoke BC, asks whether Nova Scotia has any really high mountains. The answer, Wayne, is that at 3,954 metres, Mount Robson, the highest of the majestic Canadian Rockies, towers above anything reaching for the sky in Nova Scotia. However, everything is relative. Mount Robson is dwarfed by Alaska’s Mount McKinley which, at 6,194 metres, is the highest peak in North America, and China’s Everest, at 8,850 metres makes all other mountains in the world look short.
Nova Scotia does have some beautiful mountains. They overlook lush, fertile valleys, rolling plains, hardwood and conifer forests, granite and volcanic deposits, and magnificent bodies of water, such as the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the Atlantic Ocean itself.
Nova Scotia’s highest mountain is White Hill on Cape Breton Island, at 532 metres. On the peninsula, Nuttby Mountain in the Cobequid Hills on the Minas Basin is second at 360 metres. Higgins Mountain and Dalhousie Mountain, also part of the Cobequid Hills are both 355 metres.
Nova Scotia’s North Mountain is a volcanic (inactive) range that forms the northern side of the Annapolis Valley along the Bay of Fundy. Its highest point is Mount Rose in Annapolis County. Mount Rose peaks at 235 metres.
The Appalachians run from Quebec along the eastern seaboard and into southern USA Nova Scotia’s South Mountain range, the highest peak of which is 275 metres, forms the southern side of the beautiful Annapolis Valley and is the largest deposit of granite in the entire Appalachian Mountain Range. The Appalachians, 300 to 400 million years old, were once buried in more than a kilometre of ice and are now actually resurfacing as their ice cap melts.
There are no giants now among the hills that guard the valleys in Nova Scotia, but fossil crags and white limestone cliffs dot the landscape, and the fine collection of geological and historical mini-mountains in NS are treasures that the approximately 98,000 people who live here value as their own.
Did you know?
Nova Scotia’s highest mountain is White Hill on Cape Breton Island
The highest mountain on the NS peninsula is Mount Nutby in the Cobequid Hills
North Mountain is a volcanic range of mountains
South Mountain is the largest granite deposit in the Appalachian Mountain Range
