Where the Sierra Nevada Rises From the Sea: Sea Wolves and Underwater Yosemites

Punta de los Lobos Marinos (Point of the Sea Wolves) is the source of the name of Point Lobos State Reserve, the next section of shoreline in our exploration of the most beautiful coastline in the world, the region between Big Sur and Bodega Bay in Central California. Point Lobos is one of the most popular of California's state parks, and so its inclusion in my little mini-series should be no surprise. Landscape artist Francis McComas once said that Point Lobos is "The greatest meeting of land and water in the world." I don't know that I completely agree, but that's only because of the nearby competition that I've already talked about in previous posts.

The sea wolves aren't land carnivores. The name instead signifies the elephant seals and harbor seals that frequent this section of coast. There have always been a few around when I've stopped in the area for a visit. And how ferocious they look!

There is a connection of sorts between seals (the Pinnipeds) and other large carnivores like the bears, canines, and felines. They shared somewhat of a common ancestry around 50 million years ago in a world much changed by the disappearance of the dinosaurs several million years earlier. Without major reptilian competition (although birds gave us mammals a run for our money), the mammals diverged quickly into several distinctive clans. Of today's carnivores they are most closely related to the bears or the Musteloids (otters, weasels, and skunks).

The title of the series invoking the Sierra Nevada grows from the realization that the rocks exposed along the coast in this region originated as granites of the Sierra Nevada Batholith. Subsequent shifts on the San Andreas fault system have carried these rocks, the Salinian Block, a minimum of 200 miles to the northwest, and possibly much more. In this sense, the Sierras do rise from the sea in the form of the Santa Lucia Mountains.

One of the wonderful features of the California Coast is how diverse the geology is. We've already seen in this series coastlines carved from volcanic rocks, metamorphic rocks, and granitic rocks. At Point Lobos there is something new and different: a colorful sedimentary conglomerate. The origin of the conglomerate allows us to draw one more comparison to the Sierra Nevada, although I admit the connection is tenuous one. Yosemite Valley is a deep 3,000 foot deep canyon with steep cliffs carved out of granite. Valleys carved in granite to depths of 5,000 feet with steep sides have also existed off the California Coast, and still exist today. They are not carved by glaciers, but by underwater landslides called turbidity currents.

Turbidity currents are masses of cobbles, pebbles, sand, and silt that break loose from the edge of deltas or continental shelves and flow as turbulent masses into much deeper water. Some turbidity currents travel at speeds of upwards of 50 miles an hour and as such have tremendous erosional ability. The Monterey Submarine Canyon offshore of California is as deep as the Grand Canyon, and is around 95 miles long.

55 million years ago, the Salinian Block was hundreds of miles to the south, and a submarine canyon was eroding at that time. The canyon filled in places with conglomerate and sandstone to become the Carmelo Formation which is found in exposures all around Point Lobos.
The pebbles include fragments of volcanic rock that  eroded from large volcanoes that once existed on the surface far above the deep masses of magma that made up the Sierra Nevada granites. I've never been much of a sedimentary petrologist, but I thought the conglomerates at Point Lobos were among the prettiest I've ever seen.

The sandstone exposures display interesting weathering patterns, like the cavernous weathering seen in the outcrop below.

And finally, a little biology. Not because I know what I was looking at, but because they seemed pretty.

There will be a bit more on Point Lobos in a coming post. If you want to visit, it is on Highway 1 a short distance south of Carmel Highlands. If you go, make sure to get an early start because the park is popular and the parking limited.

Where the Sierra Nevada Rises From the Sea: Not the Easiest Beach to Find

A pleasant country road winds for a few miles through redwood forest and thickets of brush and poison oak to a secluded hidden beach. I've been through the region maybe a dozen times, but I never noticed the road branching off of Highway 1, and I usually traveled without detailed maps (really, can you believe THAT??). There are no signs, not even one giving the road a name (it's officially Sycamore Canyon Road for the record). Once you know it exists, it's not too hard to locate it, so I will leave you to your own devices on finding it for yourself.

In any case, there is a beach along the Big Sur Coast. That is actually rather extraordinary, given the way that the mountains rise from the sea. In most places there are steep inaccessible cliffs. Beaches can only form where sheltered coves allow sand to accumulate, sometimes at the deltas of creeks and rivers. The beach we are exploring today is Pfeiffer Beach, a section of coastline in the boundaries of Los Padres National Forest, but managed by the California Coastal Conservancy (I admit I've never understood how the federally-owned national forests of Big Sur were never made into national parks).

See? They really do welcome you to Pfeiffer Beach...once you find it.

There is a modest amount of parking available, and simple toilets (which is one of several possible explanations why the beach is so well hidden; it would be overwhelmed by crowds). The beach is just a few hundred yards down a sandy trail.

The very modest creek in Sycamore Canyon doesn't seem a likely candidate for producing enough sand to support a permanent beach, but some sand may be drifting along the coast from the north. The rocky sea stacks on the outer part of the beach provide an explanation for the accumulation of sand at Pfeiffer. They break up the wave energy so only relatively small waves ever impact on the beach. The sandbar is termed a tombolo, though it is not so perfect as to be a textbook example. A tombolo is a sandbar that connects an offshore sea stack with a coastline (look for a textbook example in a near future post).

The rocks include graywacke and metavolcanic greenstones of the Franciscan Complex. They formed in the guts of a subduction zone/trench system, and as such have been churned and mixed. The sea stacks are constantly pounded by the surf and have produced a group of sea arches visible from the beach.

The rock isn't right, but doesn't the shape of the hill in the picture below recall Diamond Head in Oahu, Hawaii? It's just missing a long string of high-rise hotels, and what a shame that would be here on the Big Sur coast.

From a more southerly vantage point on the beach, the tombolo is a bit clearer, connecting the sea stack on the left with the coastal cliffs on the right. The scrub covered slopes also hide some biological treasures (see page 18 of the road guide): the site includes the southern range limit for Little Sur manzanita, the rare Monterey Indian paintbrush (Castilleja latifolia), bear grass (Xerophyllum tenax); and the northern range limit for California peony (Paeonia californica). Not that I knew what I was seeing...

One more notable feature of Pfeiffer Beach is the purple sands. The beach sand is mostly composed of quartz, but streaks of the purple sand can be occasionally found. The color comes from the presence of grains of garnet in the sediment. I've now seen red, yellow, white, black, gray, purple, and green sand beaches.

See my previous posts for an explanation of the Sierra Nevada connection.