November 25, 2010

Report Details

A nice day for a walk, cloudy but not raining, cold, or very windy. I saw more people on the beach than I expected to. No fires, mostly just people & quite a few children, walking on or playing on the beach. Saw one live gull standing on the beach near the waterline, some gulls & a few members of another species (not sure what, was pretty far away) flying off shore. At the south end of my mile, higher energy wave action is (I think) transporting the lighter sand particles off shore, leaving/exposing the heavier pebble & cobble sized sediment, also "garnet" sands were very visible, some of the sand looked quite pink (in a red violet kind of way). See 2nd & 1st uploaded photos for higher energy beach (2nd) and example of "pink" and "purple" sands (1st). Also noted: what I believe is a continued shift in transport of drift logs. There is a creek outlet & path up to a street just a bit north (200 feet? 300?) of the Alpine Chalet access. For at least the past 4-5 years, if I wanted to ascend that path, I had to clamber over a large pile of driftlogs spread out over that part of the beach. Today I simply walked over, a much smaller number of logs lay mostly a bit further north. Because of the lack of erosionally protective drift logs, some of the "steps" or the slope leading up and to the path appeared to have been partially eroded or worn away by the fall/winter rains & possibly storm surges/very high tides as well. In an earlier trip report I noticed a decreasing number of drift logs as well as an apparent shift in placement. Today's observations seem to confirm the decrease/change in location. Will try to remember to photograph the logs next time.