Coming out of Cambria on the 1, low lying fog covered the peaks of the mountains – vegetated by mostly low-lying brown grasses with the occasional green tree on them. Cattle were fenced in at the base of these mountains, and it certainly didn’t feel like an area where you could just look the other way and see a jagged, rocky coastline complete with huge breakers crashing onto rocks and spraying white water high in the air. Just up the 1, we found ourselves peering over an outlook to see dozens upon dozens of elephant seals on the beach, using their flippers to cover themselves in sand and to scurry-walk for short bursts of a couple meters over the beach before tiring out and needing a rest. The elephant seal is a truly amazing animal – they are capable of diving to depths of nearly 4000 meters to forage for food. The only marine mammal capable of making deeper dives is the sperm whale. The seals expel all of the air from their lungs before making the dive as to not suffer from the adverse affects of the pressure changes, and they rely simply on reserves in their blood stream to survive the long periods underwater without air.
Soon enough, we found ourselves ascending onto the sides of mountains where below, shear cliffs literally dropped off into the ocean. I found a small, extremely steep trail that went down to a black sand beach underneath these cliffs, and went down to explore it. Breakers that look small from the cliffside turn into bone-crushing walls of water several meters high when viewed from the beach itself, and it reminds me of the grand power of nature that we sometimes forget.
The ride into Big Sur is beautiful, but full of big ascents and decents, twisting and winding in that perilous spot between the grasps of mountain and sea. We arrived at our campsite in Big Sur along the river and had a glorious meal of cooked vegetables. In the morning, most of my crew decided to explore Carmel, so I went alone to hike through and explore first Pfeiffer Big Sur Park, and later Julia Bond Pfeiffer State Park. In Pfeiffer Big Sur, almost immediately upon entering the park’s trails there is a redwood grove. The trees are astonishingly thick, with twisting lines of bark spiraling upward to the sky. The trees do not have branches and leaves until almost their tops, at which point you must crane your neck upward to see them. Yet, astoundingly, the trees still provide almost complete shade. It is this combination of features, along with the forest floor being quite clear of shrubbery (sorry knights of ni), that leave a visitor in a Redwood grove to have the feeling of being in the sanctuary of a peaceful, quiet, outdoor cathedral.
It seems that the trees exist only in groves at lower elevations, at least at this southern latitude, and often times surround streams. I imagine that they need much more water than a typical tree, and that the streams in combination with the massive amounts of fog that come off the water here, promote their growth.
Upon first entering the Cathedral, a Stellar’s Jay, possessing some of the most vibrant blue colors I have ever witnessed in nature, landed sideways upon the bark of a thick redwood, hopped in a circle, and looked me in the eye from his perch about three feet away. I would like to think that ‘welcome’ was what he was telling me. I suspect it was probably more like ‘leave your food and then leave my forest alone’.
From the mountainside at higher elevations, the redwoods don’t exist anymore and you can see out for a view of the valley. The striking thing about the view is all the different types of trees visible make up the canopy, meshing together as a single, cohesive unit but still exerting individuality. The Redwoods stand out because not only do they tower over other trees, but they have a slightly gnarled mangy appearance in their uppermost branches.
I soon made my way down a massive decent to the coast and found Pfeiffer Beach. The final footpath leading down to the beach weaves through gnarled and twisted trees that remind me of savannah vegetation from the Discovery Channel. Underneath their low canopy, their branches and roots create a labyrinth of wood to navigate through. A small, calm creek runs alongside the long, riparian grasses, leaning in the direction of flow next to the footpath. The lazyness of the creeks waters contrast greatly with the thunderous crashes that can be heard from up ahead.
The beach itself exerts a force over me that might rival the force it experts upon the large rock outcrops just a few meters off the shore – brown and craigy-looking like the cracked skin of a walrus and filled with large archways coming underneath them, the waves crash upon them from seemingly nowhere. They swell up out of calm seas just a few meters before the outcrops to form massive waves – clearly an effect of the underwater dropoff just beyond the outcrops. The gargantuan waves crash into the rocks, spraying whitewater in the air for what approaches ten seconds before it lands again. Other waves come crashing through the arch-caves with clearly lethal forces.
The immediate danger all around makes the heart start to race a bit until it realizes that the steep slope of the beach continuously wins out over the waves and tides, keeping the dangerous waters at bay. Now with no camera, I am not able to take pictures of this place; perhaps it is for the better, for words come crashing into my mind as the waves come crashing to shore – so many I can’t catch them all, but only hope to capture enough to paint a picture of this scene.
The rest of the crew returned from Carmel just in time to go to Julia Bond Pfeiffer State Park, where we visited the famous McKee falls, which is a somewhat inaccurately named place. The 80 foot stream free falling off the edge of a green, vegetated cliff straight onto the white sands of the cove beach and into the ocean is indeed spectacular, but the scene and the story here stretches far beyond just the falls. The narrow entrance to the wide cove allows the action of the waves to amplify and it creates a dual cycle wave action, one breaks but doesn’t travel, and the second breaks on top of the first and travels, fanning outwards over the beach as a shield of white water that slowly fades back to the vibrant turquoise shade found in the rest of the cove (although nowhere else along the coast – I suspect that this is a local effect of the amount of turbidity and dissolved organic matter found in this particular cove). The beach located here was not always here – in fact the waterfall here used to crash right into the ocean itself. However, in 1983 a massive landslide removed thousands of tons of material off the steep side of a cliff just north of the cove, sending all this material into the water and forcing major re-construction to be done on the destroyed section of the 1. Over the years, the southbound currents along the coast picked up the sand from this landslide and deposited them in this cove, forming the beach under the falls as well as many other beaches south of the location.
It seems that the trees exist only in groves at lower elevations, at least at this southern latitude, and often times surround streams. I imagine that they need much more water than a typical tree, and that the streams in combination with the massive amounts of fog that come off the water here, promote their growth.
Upon first entering the Cathedral, a Stellar’s Jay, possessing some of the most vibrant blue colors I have ever witnessed in nature, landed sideways upon the bark of a thick redwood, hopped in a circle, and looked me in the eye from his perch about three feet away. I would like to think that ‘welcome’ was what he was telling me. I suspect it was probably more like ‘leave your food and then leave my forest alone’.
From the mountainside at higher elevations, the redwoods don’t exist anymore and you can see out for a view of the valley. The striking thing about the view is all the different types of trees visible make up the canopy, meshing together as a single, cohesive unit but still exerting individuality. The Redwoods stand out because not only do they tower over other trees, but they have a slightly gnarled mangy appearance in their uppermost branches.
I soon made my way down a massive decent to the coast and found Pfeiffer Beach. The final footpath leading down to the beach weaves through gnarled and twisted trees that remind me of savannah vegetation from the Discovery Channel. Underneath their low canopy, their branches and roots create a labyrinth of wood to navigate through. A small, calm creek runs alongside the long, riparian grasses, leaning in the direction of flow next to the footpath. The lazyness of the creeks waters contrast greatly with the thunderous crashes that can be heard from up ahead.
The beach itself exerts a force over me that might rival the force it experts upon the large rock outcrops just a few meters off the shore – brown and craigy-looking like the cracked skin of a walrus and filled with large archways coming underneath them, the waves crash upon them from seemingly nowhere. They swell up out of calm seas just a few meters before the outcrops to form massive waves – clearly an effect of the underwater dropoff just beyond the outcrops. The gargantuan waves crash into the rocks, spraying whitewater in the air for what approaches ten seconds before it lands again. Other waves come crashing through the arch-caves with clearly lethal forces.
The immediate danger all around makes the heart start to race a bit until it realizes that the steep slope of the beach continuously wins out over the waves and tides, keeping the dangerous waters at bay. Now with no camera, I am not able to take pictures of this place; perhaps it is for the better, for words come crashing into my mind as the waves come crashing to shore – so many I can’t catch them all, but only hope to capture enough to paint a picture of this scene.
The rest of the crew returned from Carmel just in time to go to Julia Bond Pfeiffer State Park, where we visited the famous McKee falls, which is a somewhat inaccurately named place. The 80 foot stream free falling off the edge of a green, vegetated cliff straight onto the white sands of the cove beach and into the ocean is indeed spectacular, but the scene and the story here stretches far beyond just the falls. The narrow entrance to the wide cove allows the action of the waves to amplify and it creates a dual cycle wave action, one breaks but doesn’t travel, and the second breaks on top of the first and travels, fanning outwards over the beach as a shield of white water that slowly fades back to the vibrant turquoise shade found in the rest of the cove (although nowhere else along the coast – I suspect that this is a local effect of the amount of turbidity and dissolved organic matter found in this particular cove). The beach located here was not always here – in fact the waterfall here used to crash right into the ocean itself. However, in 1983 a massive landslide removed thousands of tons of material off the steep side of a cliff just north of the cove, sending all this material into the water and forcing major re-construction to be done on the destroyed section of the 1. Over the years, the southbound currents along the coast picked up the sand from this landslide and deposited them in this cove, forming the beach under the falls as well as many other beaches south of the location.
The scar from the landslide is amazingly still clearly visible on the right side of this photo - a testament to the long timescales over which geology operates
With the last rays of daylight upon us, I brought the crew back to Pfeiffer Beach because I wanted them to see it. Now at low tide, the wave action didn't have nearly the effect as I described earlier, but we had a good time exploring the beach and surrounding forest, and playing jump rope with some kelp strands.
Exploring the low-lying coastal forests
Jump roping with kelp strands on the beach is a great way to train for riding...
