Salsbury Point

In the fall of 1995, Kitsap County Parks removed the old riprap and nourished the beach. And it's still doing remarkably well.

It's a difficult site - the lagoon was filled, the beach pushed out, and the coastal regime altered because of the boat ramps and because the floating bridge has cut off much of the southerly wave action (which would have continued to deliver sediment). The original plan was just to rebuild a nicer rock bulkhead, but a habitat biologist pushed back, suggesting something softer. And County Parks staff were willing to listen. A geologist with the state (much younger then) helped them sketch out some ideas and cross-sections, based on experience with some of Wolf Bauer's designs.

Beach east of the boat ramps

Although I was pretty confident the project would work, I never would have expected it to go 20 years without a little assistance. The underlying erosion problem remains and the beach has gradually retreated into the backshore created in 1995. The backshore is a little too high, so it doesn't get overtopped, and therefore supports upland vegetation better than beach grass. An old drain pipe has gradually been exposed and dribbles rusty water onto the beach.

Healthy beach at south end of park

Previous post:  Salsbury Point: 2013

I think some adaptive management is due. Before someone gets surprised and does something dumb. I understand there is talk of doing some work on the boat ramp(s) - maybe that will be a chance to look at some options.

AERIAL VIEW

Of course, there's still a difficult stretch between the main park and the ramp - I think it's where electric cables head out under the canal. It's oriented obliquely to the waves and has no sediment - which presents a real challenge.

Port Gamble

I posted about the old Port Gamble mill site a couple of years ago (Teekalet 2014) and since then much of that site has been cleaned up - although any significant redevelopment is still down the road.

This post is from the shoreline south of the point, along the western shore of the bay. This area is also getting cleaned up - it used to be piles, log rafts, and other timber industry relics, some of which remains.

This is a fairly protected shoreline of modest bluffs and small stream mouths. It's going to be a very pleasant shoreline to explore as the public access is improved and the remaining debris is removed, although I assume some of the old stuff will stay, either to provide some historic context or because it gets overlooked.

AERIAL VIEW

Maybe I'll come back in the kayak this summer.

Edgewater Beach

Before 2005, this was an out of the way spot where a lot of folks came to run their dogs on the beach. There was a dirt parking lot behind an eroding bank, and a small pocket beach tucked into the corner formed by the eastern end of the old tank farm.

Then the Port of Everett built the Mount Baker Terminal, primarily to move large airplane parts up the hill to Boeing's plant at Paine Field. Mitigation for the pier included improvements to the beach, but until the last year or so it was still sort of hard to get down here. Now the park is open and there were dogs out running on the beach again.

AERIAL VIEW

There are really three parts to this beach. There is the western corner where the beach was before. The orientation doesn't really lend itself to stability and it tends to unravel (just as it did prior to the pier), causing erosion along its back edge and leaving a beach covered with smaller riprap and quarry spalls shed from the adjacent riprap. Sediment eroded from this beach ends up on the low tide terrace, with help from the streams under the pier.

The middle part of the beach is largely under the pier and isn't really a beach, but is actually the delta of the two creeks that emerge from pipes under the base of the pier. The creeks drain two gullies that lead down the hill above the tank farm. The creeks are very effective at redistributing beach sediment from the upper beach down to the low tide terrace, where it's hard to get it back. This appears to be the sink for some of the sediment added on both sides of the pier ten years ago.

The beach farther east stretches out for 1000' along the railroad grade and has done well. It's probably eroded back a little, but there's a nice berm, plenty of logs, and a heavily vegetated backshore where once there was just a towering seawall and no beach at high tide. 

Much of the sediment lost from this beach has simply spread out farther along the train tracks, which is exactly what was hoped for in the first place.

This was an expensive project and we may need some cheaper approaches, but it's an important demonstration of how we might eventually restore a lot more of the Great Northern Beach between Golden Gardens and Everett.

Mukilteo

Government Pier - the big old fuel pier when this was still a tank farm - came out last year, one of a series of steps to remodel this shoreline on the north side of Point Elliott. The plan in the next few years is to relocate the ferry terminal to this area, with the new dock taking advantage of the deep water right offshore.

AERIAL VIEW

The edge is still pretty ragged. I don't mind the buttress of the old pier, but the riprap is a mess (it could probably be steeper and neater, leaving a much nicer beach) and there's an awful lot of asphalt rubble and old plumbing still left. It's pretty common after a structure on the beach is demolished for old debris to keep reemerging - something to keep after.

(There's another ugly section of shoreline farther west, in front of the NMFS Research Station, but I'll keep my fingers crossed that they have a plan to clean that up someday, too!)

I'm looking forward to this beach in a few years, after the ferry terminal is done. It seems like there is an opportunity to create a wonderful beach experience all the way from the old ferry terminal to Edgewater Beach (next post) - the only place the beach really vanishes is at the new ferry terminal itself, but the designs show some sort of walkway above the riprap and through the building.

Mukilteo Multimodal Project

The offset in the shoreline where the old pier was located will be difficult to navigate on the beach -- at least at higher tides - but with some imaginative design work, I think this segment could be made much better.

For a great view of the old pier, check out this drone video:
Mukilteo Government Pier (Kevin S)

Double Bluff

I've always assumed that Double Bluff gets its name from its configuration which presents two distinct points to ships sailing in or out of Puget Sound. In the past, I've posted from the southeastern point (Double Bluff: 2010) and the northwestern one (Double Bluff: 2008). This time we're back near the west end again.

The lower portion of this bluff is the type-section of the Double Bluff Drift -- which pre-dates the most recent Vashon glaciers by more than 100,000 years. I believe the upper portion is Whidbey formation - interglacial fluvial sediments. The two photos above show a fossil-rich peat layer and some finely-laminated silts and clays.

AERIAL VIEW

A large failure earlier this spring has dumped a huge pile of material across the beach. Although waves have already cut it back tens of feet, a bump will probably remain for many years. This sediment - at least the sand and gravel fraction, is destined to travel north to the beaches of Mutiny Bay.

Twenty years ago on a field trip (led by Don Easterbrook), we talked about a reddish layer about half way up the bluff. The story was that a peat bed had caught fire and oxidized the surrounding sediments, sort of a natural brick kiln. Coal seams and peat beds, ignited by lightning, forest fires, or humans, can sometimes burn for decades.

The recent landslide had scattered brick-like lumps of peat and clay across the beach and some were already beginning their march north.

For another twist on beach sediment derived from fire-baked sediments, check out this post from the eastern side of Wyoming's Big Horn Mountains:
Lake DeSmet: 2013

Waterman

The site of the old Waterman Mill on South Whidbey Island is by no means pristine, with it's 400' of creosote bulkhead and scattered metal debris and old tires on the beach, but it lies along a wonderful stretch of bluffs, which otherwise looks much like it did 200 years ago.

It's been acquired by the Whidbey Camano Land Trust and added to their growing list of successes, which include many very special beaches and bluffs around the two islands. Eventually, the old bulkhead will be removed (carefully -- there's a big wet hillside behind it) and this shoreline will blend back into the ones around it.

This shoreline is a reminder that our most natural bluffs are a wonderful mess, with landslides and fallen trees and a beach that can't make up its mind between sand and gravel or between wide and narrow. It's also a reminder that if a third of our beaches are armored, two thirds of them still aren't.

AERIAL VIEW

The photos don't show this, but low tide aerial photos along this longer reach of shoreline hint at mysteries offshore. The platform appears to drop off sharply (and very close to shore) in a few places, perhaps suggesting submarine landslides. Some day we'll have good shallow multibeam sonar or subtidal lidar along our entire coastline and everyone will wonder why we didn't get it twenty years ago!

Kitsilano Beach

Most of Vancouver's shorelines are oriented obliquely to the large western fetch across Georgia Strait, which means that beaches (natural or constructed) tend to do best when the orientation of shoreline allows west-facing swash aligned beaches to form. This is best seen by looking at aerial views of West Vancouver, Third Beach in Stanley Park, English Bay, and Kitsilano.

AERIAL VIEW

The main beach at Kitsilano, on the south side of English Bay, is controlled by a bouldery headland that makes the swash-aligned beach possible. I suspect sediment has been added periodically to maintain the broad recreational beach, but other than a couple of small rock groins, this beach doesn't depend on larger groins like we've seen at Ambleside or on the north shore of English Bay.

There's a second beach at Kitsilano, just around the corner northeast of the main beach. But it appears to have been created by the construction of a rock jetty at the entrance to False Creek (see aerial). It's oriented a little differently than the main beach, suggesting (to me, at least) that waves may refract around the headland between the beaches and approach this one at a slightly sharper angle.

I've always been intrigued by these rippled patterns on Salish Sea beaches. They're often pretty subtle, but they raise questions about their formation. These are not the same as ripples you might see in other types of beach environments. They typically form perpendicular to the beach and may extend through a significant tidal range. They tend to have wavelengths of 30-60 cms, but sometimes more. It seems like they would have to form on a falling tide to be preserved. But once the pattern is established at high tide, it is propagated down the beach as the tide falls. They may be somehow related to larger scale horns and cusps on other beaches, where the emergent bedform influences subsequent swash patterns, further reinforcing the original undulations. If that makes any sense at all! This phenomenon is probably well documented by others, but I've never seen it described. There is an abundant literature on cusps (still controversial) and on ripples, but I think this is something a little different. Or maybe in between.

Point Grey Foreshore - Part Four

Okay, one more post from this short stretch of beach. The seawall immediately west of Volunteer Park is very new and has gotten a lot of attention, in part because it is so unique and so visible.

As sculpture, or architecture, I thought it was pretty cool. If seawalls are going to get built, it would be nice to see them designed to be beautiful as well as functional. So many are ugly or boring or uninspired or cookie cutter. Sort of like strip malls and eastern-bloc apartment buildings. This is different.

The seawall is constructed from Corten (COR-TEN) Steel, an alloy intended to oxidize rapidly, creating a rust coating that doesn't require painting. It's been around for a long time and has become a favorite of some architects and artists who like its raw look and functionality. 

For more on this seawall, including about its designers and builders, check out:
ShapedScape 2014
Houzz: Metamorphous

When this was first brought to my attention earlier this year, one of the claims was that it would naturally degrade over time. I understood this to mean that it was really just a temporary structure - which is sort of a neat idea with seawalls, as long as they don't just get replaced by something else later on. Given that the recommendations for Corten Steel suggest not using it near saltwater (because it will corrode even faster), I guess this adds weight to the argument that this is a "temporary" installation. But what happens as it breaks down over a few decades? Does the steel begin to develop ragged holes as the rust stains gradually spread down the beach? Or is the whole process completely benign?

For the time being, the wall is sufficiently far back that only the highest tides will reach it. But if this shoreline is eroding - and we must assume that it is - there will be less and less beach in front of the wall over time. The boulders placed on the beach (we saw this approach used in West Vancouver a few posts back) may trap some sediment, but they don't really change the underlying processes of rising sea level and chronic erosion.

Point Grey Foreshore - Part Three

While the foreshore is natural, the terrestrial edge is definitely not. This shoreline is almost entirely walled off. The walls reduce erosion, but probably their greatest benefit to the residences above is that they allow the terraces and patios to be extended right to the bluff edge, something the ragged natural edge would make difficult. Many of the walls had glass railings bolted to their top edge. The walls also discourage invasive brambles and human trespassers.  

Seawalls are often very mundane, utilitarian structures -- unpainted concrete, rock, or timber surfaces that are rarely seen by the people who live above them. But seawalls, particularly high walls like these, are great surfaces for artistic expression, and while this does nothing to address the environmental impacts, it sure makes the walls more interesting to folks on the beach.

Point Grey Foreshore - Part Two

As I often do, I've done some homework on this shoreline, trying to find background material, interesting footnotes, and corroboration for some of my observations. One thing I found fascinating was that this was described as the last natural shoreline in Vancouver. I guess it depends on where you stand, and what direction you look. If you stand at the base of the bluff and look towards the green residential towers of downtown and the West End, the shore does indeed look natural. But if you stand on the foreshore and look landward, you see some of Vancouver's most expensive homes, some amazing seawalls, and none of the original forest.

Calling it natural makes more sense if you contrast it with much of Vancouver's other shoreline, which consists of a wonderful public promenade, built atop a spectacular seawall. You can walk or ride a bike from Canada Place on Burrard Inlet all the way to Kitsilano, following 11 km of paved trail around Coal Harbor, Stanley Park, English Bay, False Creek, and past Granville Island (Vancouver Seawall). The Seawall ends in Kitsilano and the path then follows an inland route west to Jericho Beach and UBC.

Stanley Park 2008
Yaletown 2011

There have been proposals to extend the seawall (the one with the promenade) west from Kitsilano to Jericho Beach along this northern shore of Point Grey, but these have been opposed by folks who want to see this shoreline remain as it is (Georgia Strait: July 2012).

For another perspective on the natural shoreline, and for those who like to mix interpretive dance with their coastal geology, Rewilding Vancouver is a reminder that nature is defined by humans, and we may all define it a little differently.