Reef Bay Sugar Mill Ruins

Over the last few months I’ve been checking out the trails, scrambles, snorkels and places described in my book, St. John Off The Beaten Track, looking for changes and updates for the upcoming 2010 edition.

Dean Doeling at Par Force Estate

Yesterday’s adventure was the Reef Bay Coastal Walk, for which I was fortunate enough to enjoy the company of Dean Doeling, the founder of Using Sports for Social Change.

Despite the appearance of some threatening squalls moving along the Caribbean coast on St. John’s south shore, it turned out to be a perfect hiking day, that is some sunshine for taking photos and some cloud cover to mitigate some of the negative effects of our tropical summer sunshine. The little bit of rain that fell on us was just enough to be refreshing without leaving us soaking wet.

The first surprise of the day was the great job that was done on the steep  trail leading down to Parrot Bay, transforming the once slippery path into a rustic set of stairs fashioned out of pieces of treated lumber supported by rebar stakes – my thanks to whoever was responsible, Nice job!

We walked along the deserted beach, from where you could see, looking out to the east the southern shoreline and mountain valleys of St. John all the way to Ram’s Head, 100% natural – no developments, no houses, condos hotels or what have you just the emerald green mountains, the reddish-white rock  of the White Cliffs, blue skies and turquoise seas. A light invigorating onshore breeze carried the smells of the gently breaking surf and the nearby rain squalls.

At the end of the beach we scrambled over the colorful red and white “Chocolate Hole rocks” to Little Reef Bay and the only lagoon on St. John, then we hiked the short spur trail that takes you to the Reef Bay Trail near the sugar mill ruins.

The second surprise was that National Park crews had recently finished a great job of clearing around the ruins of the sugar factory, which looked better than I have ever seen them.

Before returning back to our starting point we checked out the Reef Bay Estate House, the seldom visited Par Force Estate ruins and the petroglyphs.

All in all, this is a really great hike offering access to many of the attractions of the Reef Bay Trail ( Sugar Mill ruins, Petroglyphs, Great House and Par Force Ruins) but substituting a sea level shoreline scramble for the steep decent down the Reef Bay Valley that failing arrangements for a pick up by boat would necessitate an arduous climb back up the valley.

Boiling Bench	Steam Engine
Cane Crushers	Shoreline Flower

This entry was posted on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 2:11 pm and is filed under Life on St. John USVI, St. John Virgin Islands, St. John Virgin Islands Trails. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.