Devils Slide Trail

I'm now back in California for Ella's third birthday and, as it's the Memorial Day long weekend we decided to visit the Devil's slide for a day out. The 'slide' is a precipitous cliff-face of unstable rock that was also home to the famous Route 1 and the highway was periodically closed at this point after rock falls. This is now a thing of the past as route 1 now buries itself in a tunnel opened last year to avoid the geological fragility of hugging the coast line. Here's the tunnel looking north with old highway 1 curving off to the left.

Meanwhile, the old high way was retained but converted to a bike and walking path a little over 2 km long. The location by the way is in San Mateo county on the southern edges of San Francisco. The diagram below shows the route and the replacement tunnel.

Well, the trail is magnificent. There's lots of brilliant coastal scenery, much of geological interest, good plant and bird wildlife, some old military forts, and so on.

Let's start with the scenery. Th following slides amply justify what I mean. Yes, that's me in the first one below!

Nice, eh? On our way from the top of the map to the bottom we came across a lovely flowering plant called the Pride of Madera, presumably named after the distant Madera beach in the last of the trilogy of photos above. I wonder if it would withstand our garden frosts.

The geology, as I said, was interesting . Have a look at this photo, which shows highly buckled strata and a major fault line. In the front are two parallel rocky structures. Well, to my eye, the right hand stratum marries with the left hand stratum on the left side of the photo and one has been shifted a couple of metres to the side. The second of these photos, if you can read the small print explains the wider forces at work.

Our party consisted of Em and Greg and their two kids Ella and Flynn, apart from me. The day was sunny and nicely warm by the standards of late Autumn back home and great for a longish walk along moderately steep grades.

The second picture has a grade of 9%. Nice going down but a slug coming up pushing two kids in one stroller.

Ella and Flynn seemed to enjoy themselves:

At the end of the trail going southwards, we came across a largish and derelict gun emplacement covered in graffiti. I gather that it dates from WWII and presumably sought to deter Japanese action in the area. I doubt if it ever fired a shot in anger.

The graffiti were not the worst I've ever seen.

At the end of our trip, we headed to the beach for an hour at Pacifica State Beach. We pitched a beach screen to keep the sun off Flynn, Ella started building sandcastles with Em, I headed off for some ice-creams which went down fast - Ella ate a whole one herself and Flynn found the ice-cream congenial, while Greg headed off to buy a wet-suit. This is necessary in the freezing waters off the US west coast. Nearly everyone in the water nearby was wearing one, unlike a long the east coast of Australia. Here are Ella's castles before she destroyed them.

AS