Baker Beach

Whereas Crissy Field lies just inside the Golden Gate, Baker Beach lies just outside. And as a result, it was about 20 degrees colder! Whereas Crissy Field is an estuarine barrier beach, Baker Beach is more of a pocket beach, tucked in below steep bluffs of serpentinite.

The upscale Sea Cliff neighborhood is perched on the rocky cliffs above the southwest end of the beach - the closest homes isolated from the public by walls and chainlink fence.

AERIAL VIEW

The USGS has produced some beautiful sonar maps of the sea bottom off the Golden Gate, including an amazing field of sand waves in the deeper water offshore of this beach.

Under the Golden Gate Bridge, Dartnell and others, 2006.

This is the last post from my June road trip, which also means I've finally caught up. I've also caught up on my other blog. The road trip generated almost 30 entries on hshipman ("roadtrip2015") - and while there is a little bit of overlap with this one, most of the entries over there aren't beaches.

Crissy Field

Crissy Field is located in San Francisco, just inside the Golden Gate. It's seen major restoration work in the last couple of decades (mainly around 1999-2000, I believe) and has now become an amazing recreational destination. It offers great views of both the bay and the city (and of course, the Golden Gate Bridge) and on a Saturday afternoon in June it was crawling, rolling, jogging, and just plain crowded with visitors, both local and from far away.

AERIAL VIEW

The restoration work included not just the tidal lagoon and marsh, but also the beach and the dunes. For more on the history and restoration of Crissy Field, see this description at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area website.

Ocean Beach

After so many spectacular beaches in the last few days, I almost hate to include this one, but my beach collection is an attempt to compile a wide range of specimens, not just the prettiest ones. This is the south end of San Francisco's Ocean Beach, which I also posted about a couple of years ago. But that post was taken where both the beach and the weather were doing a little bit better.

Ocean Beach: December 2012

That post also includes a little bit more of the complicated story that explains why the beach to the north is healthier than this section near the zoo.

AERIAL VIEW

Admittedly, when a beach starts to unravel, expediency and budgets often lead to ugly fixes, and sometimes there really isn't a fix at all - but it sure screws up my romantic notions of treating our coasts like we really care about them!  And this is in a city that is otherwise so incredibly beautiful.

Thornton Beach

San Francisco's Ocean Beach transitions southward into progressively higher bluffs in the vicinity of Fort Funston, which then continue to rise on into Daly City towards Mussel Rock.  About a mile of the bluffs between Fort Funston and the northern portion of Daly City are marked by a spectacular deep-seated landslide complex - characterized by rolling topography and shore-parallel ridges and swales.


AERIAL VIEW
My brief research suggests a range of ages for this slide - which is often the case with these features - since some people are referring to the age of the overall feature, whereas others refer to specific events or even to more recent reactivation.  From what I can tell, the landslide dates back hundreds of years, but experienced significant movement in the 1906 earthquake and continued to experience some additional sliding during the past century.  Regardless, the railroad, and later the highway, that was built on the face of the bluffs from San Francisco to Pacifica (and beyond), in the early 1900s, has not survived - except in small pieces and on interpretive signs.

Ocean Beach

The west side of San Francisco slopes down to the ocean in rolling sand dunes, now stabilized by the endless residential blocks of the Richmond and Sunset neighborhoods.  The sandy beach is all that remains of the original system, cut off from the city by the Great Highway and the impressive recurved seawall built to keep the Great Highway where it was built.

AERIAL VIEW

This is a complicated beach that has experienced long cycles of erosion at one end or the other for the past century.  Climate and wind patterns shift sediment back and forth as they do on most beaches, but there are also interesting dynamics related to the availability of sand from offshore deposits at the mouth of the bay (USGS Field Trip Report, ASBPA 2005).  The beach is doing well at the north end but there have been serious erosion problems at the south end down near Sloat Avenue for many years and there have been recent efforts to nourish the beach at that area.

The O'Shaugnessy Seawall at the north end is often held up as an example of a successful seawall - although I suspect what it really shows is that seawalls work best, and have the least impact, where the beach in front of them is stable or building.  It is a substantially built structure which means it may continue to protect the Great Highway even if the beach were to go away or sea level were to rise.  For the time being, it provides a nice promenade with easy access to the wonderful beach.