It was my bright idea to hike up the mountain to see the Virgin Mary statue. It was erected by Charles-Napoleon Robitaille, a Quebec City merchant travelling on the frozen Saguenay River. He fell through the ice and

“imploring the Virgin Mary for help, he finally managed to pull himself out of the water. Having become very sick as a result, he again pleaded with the Holy Virgin to let him live ten more years so that he could take care of his family. Wanting to give thanks to She who saved him twice, Robitaille decided to have a statue of the Virgin erected on Cape Trinité…The statue was shipped to L’Anse-Saint-Jean on a steamer but a handling error sent the statue overboard. Fortunately, it was made of white pine and it floated. It was then towed by rowboat to the foot of Cape Trinité, a 15 km trip. Originally made from three wood blocks, it had to be cut into 14 sections before it could be hauled to the top of the cape by hand; a job that took eight days to complete.”

I can imagine that the path the top of the cape in 1881 (that is when it was erected) was probably not as nice as it is now. We had stairs and rest stops along the way and yet we were very tired once we reached the top.

Here are a few pictures of the boat from the way up.

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To prove that we made it all the way there, here are a couple of pictures of us.

According to my Fitbit, the entire trek was 15000 steps or 10 km, so we were pretty tired when we got back. Of course, probably not as tired as the 100 or so people going up in the heat of the day! As we were coming down, we passed then and they kept asking how much further it was (they were still near the bottom). Anyway, if you do decide to do this hike, you should start early in the morning (we were the first and only ones on the trail).

We spent the afternoon swimming. It was so nice to cool off!