Where the Sierra Nevada Rises From the Sea: A Compilation of Posts

The Sierra Nevada of California is one of the great mountain ranges of the world. The soaring granite peaks, the deep glacial valleys, and the towering Sequoia trees represent some of the most beautiful sights to be seen anywhere on the planet. What is less known is that a portion of the Sierra Nevada is present elsewhere in the state. Around 30 million years ago the San Andreas fault system became active and sliced off a portion of the southern Sierra Nevada batholith and carried it northwest for several hundred miles. It now makes up a considerable portion of the Central California coastline, stretching from Big Sur on the south to Bodega Bay on the north. It is in my humble opinion one of the most beautiful and dynamic coastlines to be found anywhere on planet Earth.

I recently finished my latest blog series, and I present here a compilation of the fifteen entries in the series. If you missed any, here is the place to find them!

  Seeking Geology Along the Most Beautiful Coast in the World

A sneak peak at the coming series. At this point I hadn't fully appreciated that I was going to be covering the entire Salinian Terrane, so I didn't mention the Sierra Nevada connection in the first post.

Where the Sierra Nevada Rises From the Sea: The Big Sur Coast

With the second post I hit upon the idea of the Sierra Nevada connection with my exploration of Limekiln State Park in the southern part of the Big Sur coast. It is a stunningly rugged stretch of coastal cliffs, and amazingly, the state of California almost shut down this beautiful place.

Geologic Change along the Big Sur Coastline: Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park

I punted on this one. I wrote this blog four months earlier about what may be the prettiest cove along the prettiest coast in the world. But the post fit well with the theme and scope of this series, so here it is: one of California's two tidal falls. And gigantic landslides.

Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park

A short distance inland from the coast we discover a gem of a state park, Pfeiffer Big Sur. The Sierra Nevada has the Sequoia trees, Big Sur has Coast Redwoods. And both the Sierra Nevada and Big Sur have huge wilderness areas. The wildlands around Big Sur are far less crowded.

Not the Easiest Beach to Find

Big Sur has some nice beaches, and not all of them are on the main highway. You have to be a bit of a sleuth to find Pfeiffer Beach, but it's worth the effort. And...garnet sand beaches!

The Granitic Rocks of Garrapata State Park

One of the lesser known beach parks of the central California coast, Garrapata is a beautiful place that belies its horrendous name ("tick" beach). It has some of the nicest exposures of "Sierran" granite in the region.

Sea Wolves and Underwater Yosemites

Point Lobos was named for the seals and sea lions, not for terrestrial canines. It is another gem along the coast with unique exposures of conglomerates that accumulated in deep underwater canyons that rival Yosemite in their depths.

A Quick Explore of the Monterey Peninsula

We finish our journey through Point Lobos and move north onto the Monterey Peninsular. Here it is trees that take up some of the geologic story. Monterey Pines grow naturally only in a few places, mainly on the Peninsula, but have become one of the most widely planted trees in the world. The Monterey Cypress is another unique species in the region.

Half Moon Bay

We take a look at coastline of totally different character as we reach the Half Moon Bay region. There are prominent marine terraces that make for gentle scenery (and apparently great golf courses). There are some nice tidepools in the area, and during the right time of year, the Mavericks hit, the gigantic waves that bring surfers from around the world.

Little Boxes on the Hillside, Little Boxes Made of Ticky-Tacky: The Mess at Mussel Rock

The San Andreas fault looms large in the history of the Central California coastline, but hasn't made an appearance on our journey until now. At Mussel Rock in Daly City, the fault trace moves offshore. The epicenter of the 1906 San Francisco may have been close by. And there is a famous folk song about the cookie-cutter houses on the high, unstable slopes...

Some Call it the Golden Gate...

Maybe you haven't heard that there is a big bridge that connects the city of San Francisco with the Marin Headlands and the rest of Northern California. It's not likely, but it's possible. There is some interesting geology going on underneath the bridge abutments.

On the Most Inaccessible Mountain Range on the Planet: The Marin Headlands

The Marin Headlands expose rocks that were once part of the midocean ridge, the vast planet encircling mountain range that no mountain climber can ever hope to climb. The scenery on the Marin is majestic. And to invaders in World War II, the cliffs would have been deadly.

Point Reyes National Seashore

The Point Reyes Peninsula has wide sandy beaches, sand spits, a bay that may have been a landing for Sir Francis Drake, Tule Elk, and a lighthouse that has to put up with some really rotten weather.

Tomales Bay and Bolinas Lagoon

If the Point Reyes Peninsular bears the brunt of violent Pacific Storms, the mountains of the peninsula shelter the lands to the east. Two bays along the San Andreas fault are peaceful and serene, which belies their violent origin.

Birds and a Hole in the Head at Bodega

We wrap up our exploration of the Sierra that rises from the sea with a look at Bodega Head, the site of a classic horror movie, and a horror story with a nuclear reactor as the main character. A reactor that was almost built on top of the San Andreas fault. It's also the northernmost exposure of the Salinian/Sierra Nevada rocks.

Hitting the Road, Going to Unexpected Places

Thanks to the obstructionist party in the House of Representatives, we've had to completely retool our last overnight field studies trip of 2013. We had planned to explore Sequoia and Kings Canyon, but with the absolutely wrong-minded shutdown of the federal government, those parks are closed.

Luckily, even though the state of California flirted with the idea of closing her state parks, they are open for business, so we will be exploring one of the greatest stretches of coastlines in the world, the one between Big Sur and Bodega Bay. There just isn't any place like it anywhere.

It's been a while (like never) that I've had to plan and conduct a three day trip with three day's notice. I started from scratch, but I think we've got an ambitious itinerary that is flexible, and bound to be fascinating no matter where we go.

I will let you know how it worked out in a few days!

In the meantime, contact your representative and tell them to stop holding the government hostage. The fools in Washington have officially failed basic civics and political science. You don't get your way by tossing hundreds of thousands out of work, and taking food from children and the elderly (including the veterans).

Geologic Change Along the Big Sur Coastline: Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park

Gee, I bet no one has ever thought to take a picture here before...

Okay, maybe a few people have chosen to take pictures of the scene above. The view of McWay Falls in Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park along the Big Sur Coastline of Central California is iconic. It is pretty much visible from only one trail and overlook, since the beach is (quite properly) closed to visitation (try googling an image from any other angle). But is there a prettier waterfall anywhere?

Actually, though, the proper name for McWay Falls is a tidefall, since during high tide the water falls directly into the sea (only two waterfalls in California do this, and only a few dozen in the world). Taking the longer view, it's not hard to see how a waterfall here could drop into the sea. The Big Sur Coastline is a mountain range that falls directly into the sea. The Santa Lucia Range reaches elevations of more than a mile, and at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, a 4,000 foot high peak is only two miles from the beach as the crow flies (or falls).

The Santa Lucia range and the rocks along the coast are part of the Salinian Block, an assemblage of granitic and metamorphic rocks that is related to the Sierra Nevada. The rocks formed in a magmatic arc several hundred miles to the south. They were carried north during the last 29 million years by movements of the San Andreas and related fault systems. The combination of tough, hard-to-erode rocks and rapid tectonic uplift has turned the Big Sur into one of the most beautiful coastlines in the world.

This is a zoom on McWay Creek cove in the picture above. To get a sense of scale, look for the tourists on the left hand margin of the photo halfway up.

McWay Falls and the cove it is in are not pristine wilderness. The land was in private hands for many years, and there was once a house where the viewpoint is today. The owners planted palms and eucalyptus, as well as numerous other non-native plant species. The park is in the slow process of removing the invasive species. I'm not against the idea. There is a redwood grove just up the canyon (McWay Falls is very close to the southern edge of the natural range of the trees). It's hard to imagine humans improving the natural vegetation here.

There have been geologic changes here too, and in a sense they are "non-native" as well. The construction of Highway 1 through the Big Sur country was completed in 1937, and the steep topography necessitated making roadcuts into inherently unstable slopes. Mass wasting would be a fact of life here, but a major paved highway would only make the situation worse. The highway has been shut down for months at a time while landslides were mitigated.

I am guilty sometimes of ignoring interpretive signs on the assumption that I supposedly know more than the sign-makers (a poor assumption, actually). The picture below (from a sign at the overlook) shows McWay Falls as it appeared prior to 1983. The cove was full of seawater, not sand! What happened?

In 1983, a huge mass wasting event shut down Highway 1 just north of the park for nearly a year, and repair crews dumped 8 million cubic yards of debris down the slopes below to stabilize the highway. Wave action immediately began carrying the debris south along the coast, forming sandy beaches in the protected coves where there had been no sand before. The slope is still contributing massive amounts of sand to the coastal system (the yellowish debris on the right in the picture below).

In a few years or decades, the loose debris will have been carried off and wave action will start removing sand from the coves. Some geological changes happen on human timescales.

Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park is on the Big Sur Coastline about 37 miles south of Carmel on Highway 1. Walk-in campsites are available, and a major campground can be found 12 miles north at Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park (we had a pleasant stay there during our visit this week). The park has several trails to explore beyond the overlook.