The Other California: Catch it While You Can, the Devil's Slide

California is nothing if not audacious. Our state possesses so many incredible landscapes known throughout the world: alpine mountain ranges, volcanoes, deserts, and of course the legendary California coastline. The coastline in particular has garnered a lot of attention over the years to the extent that roadbuilders tried to provide vehicular access to practically all of it. There are only a few short stretches of coast, especially in the north state, where wilderness reigns instead of highways. Highway 1 is a spectacular engineering feat for better or worse, providing some of the most astounding views a driver could ever hope to see.

But this incredible feat of engineering didn't come without serious costs and continuing hazards. Hardly a year goes by in which some portion of Highway 1 isn't shut down by mudflows and landslides. The Big Sur section of the coast has been especially hard hit in recent years. But there is one part of the highway that we Californians constantly heard about in the news, but not any longer. It just sort of disappeared from the public consciousness. It's a section between Pacifica and Half Moon Bay called the Devil's Slide.

One needs only to look at the Google Earth image (above) to see the insanity of trying to build and maintain a road across the coastal cliffs here. The near total lack of vegetation is an immediate clue to the instability. A closer look at the geology of the rocks exposed in the cliff reveals a complex mess. To the right is the bold cliff labeled on the map below as Devil's Slide, although that particular rock is not the source of the problem. It's a relatively coherent intrusive complex called the Granitic Rock of Montara Mountain. The unit consists of granite and quartz diorite, which to most humans looks like granite. It formed about 86 to 93 million years ago as part of the Sierra Nevada batholith. Being found along the coast, it seems a bit out of place, and it truly is. It was sliced off the south end of the Sierra Nevada by the San Andreas fault system and transported several hundred miles north at the furious rate of about 2 inches per year. 

The problem child of this geologic mess is the gray colored unit labeled Tss on the geologic map below. It is an unnamed sequence of sandstone, shale, and conglomerate of Paleocene age, from around 55-60 million years ago, just after the great extinction that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs and many other species. These weakly consolidated sedimentary rocks have been severely deformed and sheared by nearby fault zones into a jumbled mass of unstable blocks prone to sliding. The main slide surface is about 150 feet beneath the surface, and the entire unstable block is 4,000 feet long, and as much as 900 feet high.

It was a treacherous slope, but engineers (well-educated or not) love a challenge. The first attempt at building a road came in the late 1800s when a road was carved about 100 feet above the present trail. Landslides and slope failures soon commenced, and by 1914 the road was abandoned in favor of a winding route on the other side of San Pedro Mountain (which serves today as a fire lane). 

Then the railroad designers took their turn, putting in a railway on the lower part of the cliff in the early 1900s. The slopes disagreed with the railway, and the tracks were abandoned by 1920 (the 1906 earthquake did not help). Then in 1936, the roadbuilders were ready to try again. Highway 1 was being constructed along much of the Central Coast of California, and the engineers decided they simply must have a highway across the Devil's Slide. It was finished in 1937.

The problems of course began right away. Slope failures caused major closures of the highway, in some instances for days, in others weeks, and in 1995, five months. Numerous fixes were proposed, but most would have caused severe environmental disruptions in the marine ecosystem below, and unwanted urban growth above (an improved and widened freeway would have brought commuters to Half Moon Bay). So the status quo continued (fix the breaks and keep the damaged road open as much as possible). Driving the highway was an exhilarating and bumpy experience, and for geologists it was a frustrating adventure because there was no safe place to stop and study the geology of this fascinating case study in slope failure. 

Another solution gained steam in the early 2000s: a tunnel bypass. What was proposed were two single lane tunnels underneath San Pedro Mountain. At 4,000 feet each, they would be among the longest of tunnels in California, and would end up costing 'only' a third of a billion dollars. The Tom Lantos Tunnels were completed in 2013, and the transportation saga of traversing the Devil's Slide appeared to be over. 

So what to do with the old highway? It could have simply been abandoned like the nearby WWII defense installations, but a better idea emerged: convert the old highway into a hiking trail. San Mateo County took over the property and converted the highway into a 1.3 mile long hiking and biking trail, complete with parking at both ends, restrooms, and a series of useful interpretive signs. It opened in 2014, but I didn't get a chance to explore it until last week.

The paved trail was in excellent condition. Maybe the lack of heavy truck traffic eases some of the pressure on the slope. There are great exposures of the rocks on the mountain side, and glorious ocean views on the cliff side. More than 150 bird species have been observed along the trail since its opening in 2014, but there is the potential for many more as birders have access that wasn't possible prior to the construction of the tunnels.

The trail also offers some close-up examples of slope mitigation methods as well. A section of the cliff has been covered in a metal mesh to prevent boulders from injuring people. 

One might argue that this locality is not in the spirit of "The Other California", since it has been a famous section of Highway 1 for many decades, but it's only been the last few years that anyone could actually walk and study this fascinating spot, and only a relative few people know about the trail. If you visit the Bay Area it is well worth a visit.

But you might consider doing it soon! There is less stress on the slope from heavy traffic, but the fundamentals of the slide are still in place, and it can't be predicted when new damage might occur...

For the park brochure and trail map of the Devil's Slide Trail, use this link:

DSTrailBrochure-Nov2018-FINAL-web-formatted.pdf (smcgov.org)

For a geology road trip along the coast south of San Francisco check out this link:

Microsoft Word - chapter8.doc (usgs.gov)

For engineering details on the slide, check out the following USGS Bulletin:

USGS Bulletin 2188, chapter 7

For a geologic map that covers the slide area, check out:

Microsoft Word - smgeo.doc (usgs.gov)

USGS Open-File Report 98-137

Waves on Fire at the Devil's Slide near Half Moon Bay

Even though Geotripper is a geology-based blog, it seems ocean waves don't make an appearance all that often in my posts. Try as I might, I don't photograph them very well, or very creatively. I love them, however, and can watch them for hours at times.

I think part of my difficulty is the point of view. Most of the time we are standing on a shoreline and the waves crash in front of us, always with the curl of the impending breaker, and the swash upon the sand beach. Always the same angle. And that's what caught my attention tonight. We had occasion to be in Half Moon Bay at sunset, and it was a truly beautiful splash of color in the sky. We had finished dinner at Miramar, where the coast is a long curving stretch of sand. Certainly pretty, but we wondered what the sunset would look like from a bit higher...like hundreds of feet higher. So, as the sun sank closer to the horizon, we headed north on Highway 1, and soon reached the new tunnels at Devil's Slide.

The Pacific Coast Highway was meant to hug the coast from Mexico to Oregon, and the effort to complete it was monumental. Regrettably, almost all of California's coastal cliffs bear the scars of road construction, and only about 25 miles of the state's spectacular shoreline remains as true wilderness. Just the same, there is no experience quite like following this highway from one end of the state to the other. It begins in the nightmare of urban traffic throughout most of Southern California, leading to winding mountain roads through immense Redwood forests in the north. Of all the spectacular stretches of highway, the one between Half Moon Bay and Pacifica has given road engineers the biggest headache of all. It's called the Devil's Slide.

The highway was built over an active landslide hundreds of feet above the shoreline. From the very beginning, the road experienced constant damage from slope failures, and the highway was often closed for expensive repairs. The powers-that-be finally gave up and eventually built the Tom Lantos Tunnels through the mountain behind the slide and closed the old highway in 2014. It was given to the county and is now operated as a trail and scenic overlook.

That's where we found ourselves tonight at sunset: hundreds of feet above the shoreline looking almost straight down on the crashing waves. I realized I was seeing something unique, the waves from above, with the dramatic light of the sun on the backside. It was an indescribable sight, so I won't even try. You'll just have to enjoy the pictures.

I've included a couple of pictures of the broader view so you can have some context for understanding the pictures above.

The waves are rolling into a narrow cove, and break as they reach shallow water. The shore is mostly bedrock with no sand, so as the waves break, they often reflect (bounce off the water's edge) and roll backwards, breaking again against the other side of the cove. The intersecting waves create an interesting tapestry.

Despite the imposing name, the Devil's Slide is one of the most spectacular stretches of the California coast, and is not to be missed if you ever find yourself in San Francisco. It's no more than 30 minutes from downtown or the airport. I've often visited there while waiting to pick up people from the airport.

The Other California: Limekiln State Park, Part 1

What is the Other California? It's been a little while since I've posted on the subject, so here's what it is: an exploration of the lesser known places of our beautiful state, the places that you don't find on the postcards all that often; the places you visit when you've checked off that list of must-see spots like Yosemite or Death Valley. In today's post, we are taking a look at an interesting little beach in the southern part of the Big Sur Coast country: Limekiln State Park.

It's easy to miss while winding down the highway; focus too much on getting to the famous parks at the north end of Highway 1, and you might not see the turnoff at all. There is barely any parking available, so the beach is uncrowded. It's different from a lot of beaches in California; it has a good-sized creek that has littered the beach with large boulders of very attractive metamorphic and plutonic rocks. Does anyone see a face in the cliff?

Despite the late August visit, there was a lot of water for a central California River. A lot of them are dry by now. The mountains upstream reach a mile above sea level, and they catch a lot of rainfall. Enough sinks into the ground that springs keep the river flowing year-round. The babbling brook contrasts nicely with the crashing waves. I had a delightful time looking at chunks of gneiss, schist, marble, and granitic rock.

Highway 1 passes the park on a high bridge. Looking upstream, we can see that there might be a bit more to this park than a beach. For one thing, why in the world do they call it 'Limekiln'? What secrets lie up the the canyon? Keep an eye out for part 2!