Rolling Bay Walk

In January, 1997, a family of four was killed by a landslide at this site on Bainbridge Island (see Brenda Bell's article, The Liquid Earth, in the January, 1999, Atlantic Monthly). Other nearby houses were lost to separate slides during the previous winter and in March 1997, although without the fatalities. Today, a double-tiered retaining wall is being built on the slope so the waterfront lots can be redeveloped.

Point Bolin

Some seawalls are special. I'm sure there is a great story to go with this one, but it's not one I've learned yet. The concrete pipe segments that remain upright are acting as planters for dune grass.

Chimacum Beach

More pictures of the evolving beach at Chimacum. The spit seems to be becoming more distinct. The hydrology of the back-barrier lagoon is still a bit confused - with two outlets and a drainage governed by the incidental topographic subtleties of February's excavation work. Some organic material is accumulating in the nascent lagooon. The hydroseeded vegetation on the upland is beginning to take hold, along with a healthy assortment of nettles, blackberry, and morning glory.

Clallam Bay

Back to May for this one. Some beaches attract more attention than others. After the Clallam River reaches the coast, it hangs a sharp left and heads a mile or two west before finding its way to the sea. But it doesn't always find its way to the sea in the same place. And sometimes, it doesn't even have the oomph to reach the sea at all, disappearing into the gravel behind the berm for months at a time. This presents a bit of a challenge if you are anadramous. A bridge usually provides pedestrians a way across the river to the beach. Except last year, when the river migrated right under the seaward end of the bridge, taking the steps away and leaving a bridge to nowhere. The best answer is often to roll with the punches rather than fight (or even try to predict) nature's whims. Simpler to build a new ramp and prepare for occasional closures.

Passe-a-Grille

I liked Pass-a-Grille, maybe because I enjoy these older beach communities where condos and t-shirt shots don't dominate the landscape. I also like beach towns where there there is continuous public access to the beach; not isolated parks and narrow corridors between hotel towers.

I suppose the presence of intact, early 20th century buildings, is an indication that this area has been spared a direct hit for close to a century. I can't help but wonder if someday I'll be looking at news footage of this barrier wiped clean of structures. I wonder how you rebuild to FEMA standards while maintaining the requirements for historic landmarks?

Clearwater Beach

Clearwater looked to me just like a Florida Beach should look like, with sunshine, crowds, colorful umbrellas, and lots of the large multi-story hurricane deflectors built in the dunes.

Florida Panhandle

It's been thirty years since I've been in Florida, and now two trips in less than six weeks! Our time at the beach has been limited by our family's general abhorrence of hot, muggy weather, but we've managed some short excursions (for the rest of the story, go to hshipman blog).

The flight from DFW to Tampa bypassed a large storm over New Orleans, so I didn't get good views of the coast until we got to Mobile - I was hoping for a good overview of post-Katrina Pass Christian and Biloxi. We flew a few miles north of the coastline from Mobile to Appalachicola area before cutting across the Gulf toward Tampa Bay. The photo may be Destin, though these resort beaches tend to all look the same from 35,000' (or maybe even from sea level?).

The hurricane deflectors (very small in this picture) remind me of lightning rods on the ridges of Pennsylvania barns or the wire spikes that keep seagulls off of waterfront restaurants and pigeons off of public monuments. They have been constructed up and down the southeast coast. Since hurricanes aren't very frequent, authorities let people live in them when they aren't actually being used to protect the nation from tropical storms.

Samish Island Log Crib

This was a new one for me. It's a log crib, bolted together with stainless cable and hardware, extending out in front of the base of the bluff. It was built within the last year or so, presumably as a softer approach to erosion control than a conventional bulkhead. I'm still struggling with what to make of it. If nothing else, I wish it didn't extend so far onto the beach and that it had incorporated soil and plantings. Functionally, it appears equivalent to a failing timber seawall -- maybe that's a good thing. I wonder what the hardware will look like in 20 years?

Samish Island

The north side of Samish Island is a great place to talk about human impacts to beaches and we've been bringing the CTP class, and other groups, here for years. Bulkheads, bluff modifications, and groins. Sediment supplies have been heavily impacted (some material still comes from farther northwest) and what sediment that's left is heavily compartmentalized by two large projecting fills that act as groins. The spit (Samish Beach) at the distal end has undergone a variety of changes over the decades and was most recently the site of a large (by Puget Sound standards) private gravel nourishment project.

Indian Rocks

Our approach to beach nourishment on Puget Sound is really pretty lame. Down here folks know how to do it right. Dredge it, barge it 20 miles, pump it to the beach, repeat. Do it for 9 miles of beach and then a few years later do it again. The project we got to visit is on Sand Key in St. Petersburg, from Clearwater down to Redlington. They weren't pumping today on account of possible bad weather coming in, but we got to see lots of big yellow equipment on the beach and lots of 24" pipe. Just like on Puget Sound, if you build the beach too high or too steep, a scarp develops. Bluff erosion, Florida style. Must be a pain if you're a sea turtle trying to crawl up the beach in the middle of the night with 120 eggs to lay.

More Florida beach photos at my other site (hshipman) - as usual, sometimes it's tough to separate business from personal.