Lone Tree Point

It's not hard to figure out how this place got its name, although I'm sure the Swinomish have more interesting words for it. Lone Tree Point is trying hard to be a tombolo - but lacks enough sediment to do it very well. What sand and gravel there is has built a broad, low bar out to the rocky islet, and then spread out northward as a spit that forms a lagoon across the mouth of the small creek that winds down through the Thousand Trails campground.

Google Maps:  AERIAL VIEW

The geology is messy here and the bedrock forms irregular shoals and reefs offshore. The strange tilted beaches I noted on Hope Island last year are a short distance away across a narrow channel (Hope Island:  May 2012).

Lone Tree provides an interesting contrast to other small barrier beaches in the area, such as the tombolos at Kiket Island (Kukutali Preserve) and the beach at Ala Spit (also the subject of the next post). The differences are partly due to the arrangement of the bedrock geology and partly due to the availability of beach sediment, among other things.