The isolated wilderness, arid mountain ranges and coastal cliffs of Big Sur make it one of the most dramatic landscapes along the Pacific Coast. “The big country to the south”as the Spanish called it, has even been described as a state of mind as much as it is a location. But don’t let her beauty fool you… Big Sur is an untamable wilderness that has once again reminded Californians of nature’s ability to alter an entire landscape instantly. And it’s a great place for some Adventure Hydrology.
Historically, the name Big Sur was derived from that unexplored and unmapped wilderness area which lays along the coast south of Monterey and about 300 miles north of Los Angeles.
When you visit Big Sur you get to experience a coastal landscape covered in dense vegetation that looks supremely stable, especially when you compare it to the arid canyons, rugged mountain peaks, and sleepy wash valleys that make up the Big South’s interior. But with landslides and mudflows constantly altering the coast, you may wonder how the heck such an emerald green hillside ever comes unhinged?
It was simply called El Sur Grande, The Big South, by Spanish explorers but these days Big Sur refers to about a 90-mile stretch of rugged and awe-inspiringly coastline flanked on one side by the majestic Santa Lucia Mountains and on the other by the rocky Pacific Coast.
Recently, more than 1 million tons of rock and dirt tumbled down a saturated slope in an area called Mud Creek. The slide is covering up about a one-quarter-of-a-mile (0.40-kilometer) stretch of Highway 1, and the area remains unstable. It was such a large landslide, NASA was able to capture images from space. This is not the first time Big Sur decided to cut off coastal California.
Photo credit (my friend): Brian Mack
Recurrent uplift (aka- earthquakes) of the Santa Lucia Mountains, in combination with the relentless crashing of ocean waves, extreme topography, and layered geology, makes this stretch along the Pacific Coast Highway highly vulnerable to landslides. During the winter months, both heavy rainfall (sometimes more than 80 inches per year) and incredibly high wave energy pummel the coastline simultaneously. In summer and fall, occasional wildfires remove vegetation, making the area’s slopes more vulnerable to erosion (as we saw during 2016). All these factors produce chronic landslides and in all, more than 1,500 landslides have been mapped along the Big Sur coast. Wait… now 1,501.
Hiking any coastal trail around Big Sur, it’s easy to recognize the truly contrasting elements of earth and water (mountain and sea) which the coast presents to visitors more spectacularly than anywhere else in the United States. The mountains of the rugged Big Sur coastline soar to 5,000 ft. within two miles of the ocean, which is the most abrupt elevation change of the entire Pacific shore, and many of these peaks are awaiting the adventurous – beware poison oak!
Several hundred million years ago, river-borne sediments from a mountain range in what is now Mexico were deposited along the west coast. By sixty five million years ago, this plate — called the Salinan block — began to drift northward.
Plus, and as if you could avoid them, there are a number of amazing bridges that are soaring hundreds of feet above the turbulent creek outlets. From above, you can can capture a brief snapshot of the rushing waters as they wash the interior of Big Sur out into the ocean.
These layers of sandstone, siltstone and limestone were compressed and folded by tectonic forces and, in response to dynamics of the of the Pacific Ocean’s crust, the block was halted. Tectonic forces took hold and subsequent faulting and uplifting created the San Lucia Mountain Range.
