During summer 2019, Cabox Aspiring Geopark ramped up its Virtual Reality (VR) program started in 2017 under the EU-funded Drifting Apart project. After acquiring its own 360° VR camera (with 6 lenses) in 2018, Cabox filmed 8 additional sets of hotspot scenes to compliment the 9 hotspots it filmed in 2017 for the GeoVR program, which in 2019 was stationed at Saltbox Restaurant and Geopark Information Center in Benoit’s Cove. The GeoVR program requires the use of a VR headset such as Oculus Rift to view hotspots in 3D virtual reality, creating a realistic effect similar to viewing the sights in person.
A Winter Tour of the IATNL Blow Me Down Mountain Trail
On April 15, IATNL/Cabox Geopark Director Paul Wylezol and friends Delano Pittman, Katie Broadhurst, Caroline Swan and Jamie Harnum took advantage of a beautiful late winter/early spring day to take a snowmobile ride on Cabox Geopark’s Blow Me Down Mountains, following the route of the IATNL Blow Me Down Mountain Trail. In the north, the trail starts near Frenchman’s Cove on Route 450 (Captain Cook’s Trail) on the south side of the Bay of Islands. From there the trail passes the Hummock foothills before entering Blow Me Down Brook Gulch (ie., Valley) at the “Sands”, the long sandy slope were the brook makes a right angle turn west and bisects the Blow Me Down Ophiolite Massif.