Big Sur in summer 2013, part 1: Kirk Creek, Ventana Wilderness, Limekiln State Park

This post is the first of two. To see more Big Sur photos, click here.

PICTURING CERULEAN WATERS

It was late August of 2013 and Sundari and I were driving south on Highway 1 in a car packed with camping gear and food. We passed Carmel and Point Lobos, and then the road left the Monterey Peninsula and began to climb. We had reached the Santa Lucia mountains, and our path would now run along cliffs in the narrow space between the range’s Coast Ridge and the cold Pacific ocean, in the 100-mile stretch of coastline known as Big Sur.

I’d been looking forward to this camping trip for weeks, picturing cerulean waters, foamy waves crashing over white rocks, steep green ridges looming overhead, and my camera capturing all that color. Before that August day, I’d only driven through Big Sur a few times, never stopping for more than an hour or so. I sat in the passenger seat with telephoto lens at the ready, looking back at the rocks of Carmel’s seashore as they disappeared behind us. The day was glorious, just as I'd hoped: a sea of dazzling blue, with fingers of fog that gently stretched towards the land adding shadow and contrast to the coastline.

Along with dozens of other vehicles, we stopped on Highway 1 to wait during road work lane closures. Seeing my opportunity, I hopped out to take photos. On our left the mountains rose up high and green. On our right, the slope down to the rocky shoreline was steep. The fog began to drift in more aggressively as we headed south, obscuring headlands and setting a haze over the horizon. But I could still see the white cliffs below us, resembling the white granodiorite at Point Lobos, as if those rocks had followed us along the coast.

COMPLEX AND CHAOTIC

Big Sur's pale granitic rocks are part of the Salinian Block, the bedrock of the northern portion of the Santa Lucia mountains and of most of California’s central coast. The Salinian Block is one of two major rock blocks that make up the Santa Lucia range. It’s made partly of the same stuff as the Sierra Nevada range to the east, that is, cooled magma, and it was brought here by force. As the San Andreas fault system formed, the Pacific plate moved along its boundary with the North American plate, ripping off pieces of the ancestral Sierra Nevada mountains and carrying them northwest to what is now California’s central coast.

Along the way, the Salinian Block was joined by another vast body of rock that’s referred to as the Nacimiento Block. This formation is part of a much larger body of rock known as the Franciscan Complex that’s found throughout California’s central coast. The Nacimiento makes up the southern portion of the Santa Lucia range; I wouldn’t see it until we were almost all the way to the campground where we’d spend the night. It’s of completely different origin from the Salinian Block, and its location right next to the Salinian has been a major source of confusion for geologists. In fact, many aspects of Big Sur’s rock situation are puzzling, and its geology is considered some of the most complex and chaotic in all of California.

Not that any of this was obvious when viewing the Santa Lucia mountains from the road. The range looked uniform, a solid wall separating us from the rest of the world and pushing us up against the ocean. As we drove along, I began to realize for the first time that this breathtaking mountain highway was the only way for a car to reach the tiny communities we were passing. I wondered how people had gotten around in the days before this road was constructed. Probably on horseback, I thought. Walking, lots of walking. And boats, of course. Looking down at the water, I imagined how treacherous these shores must have been for early sea voyagers. The fog, which seemed to be increasing as we drove further into Big Sur territory, must have been a deadly combination with those jagged rocks.

THE PAST AND PRESENT OF KIRK CREEK

Months later I read of how Highway 1’s construction between 1921 and 1937 completely changed the Big Sur area. What had once been a coastal trail was now a major road that allowed visitors in cars to arrive by the thousands and opened the area to more year-round residents. Making this road was a major project, requiring 32 bridges and 10 million dollars. Prisoners from San Quentin worked on the project for 35 cents a day and the promise of sentence reduction. They were stationed at several temporary camps, including one at Kirk Creek, just south of Lucia, right next to where the highway was being built.

Decades after the route was finished, the original Kirk Creek prison camp became a family campground. This open bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean was where we’d be spending the next few nights.

I recommend Kirk Creek to anyone who craves seaside camping, because you really can see the ocean from every site. We snagged one of the last available spaces and set up our tents, then walked around the small loop, comparing our site to others. The bike-in campsites were situated in the most beautiful and sheltered part of the bluff, in a grove of eucalyptus trees. Elsewhere at Kirk Creek the vegetation was coastal scrub mixed with pines, cypress, and more eucalyptus. Near the entrance we met the campground cat, who doesn’t belong to anyone in particular, but keeps showing up year after year, according to our campground host. I was impressed by the ability of this cat to survive here, in a place where predators are always looking for snacks.

By now the fog lay over everything, dampening our clothes and hair, leaving me with the impression of being wrapped in water, even up on this hillside. One hundred feet below us, the waves roared as they hurled themselves against the rocks, a sound we would hear all night long.

There was still time before dinner to take a walk. I’d just learned that Kirk Creek Campground is right across the highway from the trailhead of Vicente Flat Trail, part of the network of trails that runs through the Ventana Wilderness. Comprising 234,004 acres of uninhabited, undeveloped land in Los Padres National Forest, the Ventana Wilderness is known for its remarkable biodiversity, especially in the area of Cone Peak, which Vicente Flat Trail ascends. Cone Peak is the steepest coastal slope in the lower 48 United States. In just 3 miles from the coast it rises to 5,155 feet of elevation. Sundari had hiked the lower part of this trail before, and she told me of the views that were available from its switchbacks. The fog would hide most of that, but we decided to try it anyway.

THE FOG OF REALITY, THE REALITY OF FOG

The two of us had much to discuss on that summer afternoon. Life had been demonstrating its unpredictability with a series of unsettling events. We were attempting to work out plans for a future that would certainly resist our strategizing. We walked for about an hour, deep in conversation most of the time, stopping whenever I attempted to photograph plants and rocks. I was using the 70-200mm telephoto lens with its minimum focus distance of around 5 feet, and I was shooting things that were nearly obscured by fog. Almost everything I aimed at was impossible to focus on; I ended up with dozens of blurry photos. The fog grew thicker as the afternoon progressed, so dense that if Sundari and I got separated by more than 10 feet, I couldn’t see her.

I’ve got to come back here when the air is clear, I thought, a little disappointed that I was missing the spectacular sights this trail could offer under other circumstances, a little perplexed by my inability to pin anything down with my lens. But it was undeniably magical to walk on a winding path above the ocean swathed in thick mist, with sunset approaching so gradually we hardly noticed the changing light. Time seemed to stand still up here. I had no idea how much further this trail would go, or what the terrain would be like if we stayed on it. I gave in to the uncertainty of our position and began to enjoy feeling pleasantly dislocated from the known world.

The next morning was just as murky, and we asked our campground host about good places to spend a foggy Big Sur day. He told us to try Limekiln State Park, a couple of miles down the road. It took us only five minutes of driving to get there. We parked under enormous redwood trees and walked inland towards Limekiln Creek, instantly leaving the fog behind. Success! Maybe when we emerged from the forest the coast would be clear. For the sake of photographic variety, I hoped so.

A SECRETIVE FAULT

Limekiln State Park’s 700-plus acres are situated in deep canyons in the Santa Lucia mountains, where three creeks meet: West Fork Limekiln Creek, Limekiln Creek, and Hare Creek. After driving alongside the Santa Lucia range for miles and wondering what secret niches it held, I found it satisfying to walk straight into this deep cleft in the mountains. With all of its redwoods, the park reminded me of Big Basin Redwoods State Park, where I’d camped with Sundari the previous August. But this paradise of tall trees was darker, more lush, more mysterious. I cranked up the ISO on my camera and dove into a shadowy green world.

Limekiln Canyon is one of the deepest on the Pacific coast, and it’s part of an important geological boundary area between the different rock units of Big Sur. Its slope rises up to Cone Peak, mentioned earlier as the steepest coastal mountain in the contiguous US. Below Cone Peak, the Sur-Nacimiento Fault runs south to north, cutting across Limekiln Creek. This fault line marks the boundary between the Salinian Block in the upper part of the canyon and the Nacimiento Block at lower elevations down to where the creek meets the ocean. Most active during the late Cretaceous about 170 million years ago, the Sur-Nacimiento Fault is the longest and deepest in the area. It may be the remains of the once-offshore zone where the North American and Pacific tectonic plates collided.

In stark contrast to the bare desert lands where I’d first contemplated fault zones, Big Sur drapes a veil over the terrain. The steepness of Big Sur’s slopes and the extensive plant coverage have made it tricky for geologists to figure out just what kind of fault the Sur-Nacimiento is. In some places the Nacimiento Block has been found to underlie the Salinian, contradicting previous assumptions that the fault was of the San Andreas strike-slip variety, in which the two plates slide next to each other. Recent study has suggested that the Sur-Nacimiento may actually be a thrust fault, the type described in this post, in which one unit is thrust on top of the other. Of course I couldn't see the thrust fault for myself here, as I could at Valley of Fire. Rocks seem to blend in with ferns, moss, and the detritus of the forest floor.

BULBOUS AND ICY

Finding ourselves at a fork in the road, we took the Falls Trail, an easy mile winding under redwoods and crossing over a creek several times. Limekiln Falls, when we reached it, was a surprise. I’d never seen a waterfall quite like this one before. Liquid flowed in two streams around a cone of cream-colored material, splashing into two different pools. At the base of the falls were large boulders, and the damp earth around them suggested that in times of high flow, the waterfall’s reach extended over these rocks. During our visit, the flow of water over the top of the falls was at a low point. I was able to see the strange texture of the cone quite clearly. It reminded me of the tufa deposits I’d seen at Weeping Rock in Zion National Park.

This bulbous, whitish material is travertine. Like tufa, it’s a type of limestone formed when calcium carbonate precipitates out of water. The definitions of the two I found in my research seemed to vary, and I’m not sure I understand the difference. Many sources say that travertine is formed by hot water, such as what emerges from natural hot springs, but where is the hot water at Limekiln Creek? Did the minerals dissolve someplace upstream where the water was hot, and then precipitate after the water had cooled? How long ago did this happen? My research did reveal to me that the definition of travertine can vary greatly, depending on who’s giving it. Someday I will ask a real geologist about this.

Regardless of how it was formed, the travertine waterfall on Limekiln Creek is a thing of beauty. My wide-angle lens had been injured somehow during the Utah trip a few months earlier, but it still had the power to gather in a wide fan-shaped waterfall. Sundari took a more hands-on approach to the falls. She’d been wearing her bathing suit under her clothes all day, and now she stripped off her top layers and jumped into the larger of the two pools, the one you see pictured immediately below. She let the foamy rivulets stream over her head, wetting her hair and causing her to gasp with the shock of its iciness.

Then she got out of that pool and stepped into the other one, on the right side of the waterfall cone. This, too, was freezing cold. I admired her bravery and that of the two other hikers who submerged themselves in those cold pools while we sat on a log and ate our lunch. Such plunges were not for me. Instead, I took dozens of pictures of the cliff’s layered deposits in their range of subtle hues, slick with water and complementing their mineral tones with growths of moss and lichen. Just look at the green under that water, I thought. That might be the loveliest color I’ve ever seen.

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE

With its range in elevations and its many microclimates, Limekiln Canyon contains a wide variety of habitat zones with at least 12 different plant communities. This park is a perfect place to observe the remarkable biodiversity of Big Sur. Coastal scrub, coastal live oak woodlands, chaparral, redwood forests, valley grasslands and more are all found in close proximity to each other within the park’s boundaries. Many sources I consulted made note of the fact that this is one of the few places on Earth where redwoods can be found growing close to cacti. Rare and endangered species exist here too, such as Piperia yadonii orchid, and nearby are stands of Lucia fir trees, which are only found in the Santa Lucia mountain range. The West Fork of Limekiln Creek is a major spawning locale for steelhead trout. I could go on, but you get the point. Lots of different kinds of living things have found a spot to thrive here.

Humans have occupied the Big Sur area for thousands of years. Some archaeological evidence has shown that in the hotter months of the year, Esselen people came here to shelter in Limekiln Canyon’s coolness. The Esselen people were one of several groups who are thought to have lived on the Big Sur coast, hunting and gathering and trading with other groups for things they couldn’t find locally. Along with Salinan and Ohlone people, they found their lives drastically changed when the Spanish arrived in the late 1700s. Their story echoes that of other native people in California’s central coast and elsewhere. Disease, forced labor and malnutrition killed most of them off within a few generations, and the rest were required to assimilate in order to survive, their land taken by settlers.

Once Big Sur was taken over by Europeans in the 19th century, it became a landing place for independent-minded, self-sufficient homesteaders, many of whom cherished the area’s remoteness and inaccessibility. The construction of Highway 1 in the 1930s marked a major change in life at Big Sur, bringing in a slew of tourists who were now able to access the beautiful place that had been publicized by artists and writers starting in the early twentieth century. Mid-century Big Sur developed a reputation as a bohemian, counterculture hot spot, and in the late 1960s it became a popular destination for hippies who often camped along the coast. Many of these folks squatted for months at a time right here in Limekiln Canyon and partied on the beach at night. It’s said that among the groups who camped here was the Charles Manson family.

I find the thought of the Manson group hanging out in this dark, deep canyon to be incredibly creepy. When I first read about it, I was reminded again of Big Basin, which served as a refuge for various people over the years. There’s something about redwoods that invites in people who want to hide, people who are looking for a place where most others won’t go. These huge trees shut out the rest of the world, just as their ability to produce acidic soil and their blocking of sunlight keeps all but a few plants from growing in their immediate vicinity. This sense of escape and shelter is probably even more pronounced with the redwoods of Limekiln Canyon, lying as they do within the larger isolation of Big Sur and the Santa Lucia range. Certainly this forest felt like the darkest I’d ever visited, the most mysterious.

A LARGE DEPOSIT, QUICKLY EXHAUSTED

After the waterfall we followed an enchanting path through redwood sorrel and tall trees along the beautiful West Fork of Limekiln Creek. Soon we saw the structures that had given this canyon its name: four enormous limekilns, made of iron and stone, now crumbling ruins in a quiet grove. In these kilns, starting in 1887, limestone rocks were cooked slowly for hours until they were nothing but powdered lime. Once the lime had been extracted, it was put into barrels and taken to nearby Rockland Landing, the beach named after the company that conducted this operation, the Rockland Lime and Lumber Company. From Rockland Landing, lime was sent to San Francisco to be used in mortar and plaster for building.

Limestone came from a large deposit in the canyon, and the fuel for those long-burning fires was the redwoods that surrounded the kilns. The lime-smelting venture lasted only three years. That’s all the time it took for the limestone deposit and surrounding old-growth redwoods to become almost completely spent. This story of a short-lived limestone industry reminded me of what I’d learned about Santa Cruz, where a similar non-sustainable use of the same resources happened. Looking at the area around the limekilns, it’s hard to believe how much redwood destruction occurred, because the second growth of trees has come in so quickly. Redwoods have amazing regenerative powers, some growing to 50 feet of height within just 20 years. Maybe that’s another reason people tend to take refuge near them.

The kilns were spectral in the shadowy forest, hauntingly beautiful with their rust and plant overgrowth. It was strange and wonderful to see such old structures still standing in the middle of a remote woodland canyon. This place must be spooky at night, I thought, as I wandered around with the wide-angle lens. Even in the middle of the day it’s eerie. Sundari felt it too, and we didn’t stay long. Someday I’d like to camp at Limekiln SP and walk up this trail in the dark, perhaps on the night of a full moon.

UNDER THE BRIDGE

We followed Limekiln Creek to where it meets the ocean at the historic Rockland Landing, crossing underneath the highway bridge that stretches over the canyon. Here the world opened up. After spending several hours in the deep dark forest, it was a contrast to emerge onto a beach, to see a sky not obscured by trees. Patches of blue now showed through the fog. The introduction of sunlight drew previously unseen colors out of the plants and rocks around us. I spent the first few minutes on that beach taking pictures, afraid that the fog would come back. I photographed madly, with all the lenses, liking best the wide-angle which allowed me to capture the span of that bridge over the tents and cliifs and rocks and people.

On the rocky beach I watched a little girl make an angry protest against her family. She sat down belligerently, alone for a few minutes, providing the perfect figure to give my shot its sense of scale. Above our heads, cars sped along; it was odd knowing we were underneath a road. We’d walked through one of the campgrounds on our way to the beach, and I’d seen an occupied campsite on the bluff right underneath the bridge. I imagined spending the night below the highway, and thought I’d probably like it. I was reminded, obliquely, of sleeping in the Wal-mart parking lot under the huge transformer towers.

My eyes were drawn to the stones and boulders in Limekiln Creek where it fed the ocean. Some of these river rocks looked different from the surrounding cliffs, so different that at first I thought they must have been brought here by human hands to stabilize and decorate the beach. Many of them were granitic and contained colors I didn’t see in the cliffs. I realized that they must have washed down the creek from somewhere else.

POINT OF MEETING

These creekbed rocks – granite, schist, gneiss, and others – are metamorphic and plutonic pieces of the Salinian Block that have washed down from the upper reaches of Limekiln Canyon. They stand out on this beach, surrounded by crumblier Nacimiento Block rock, just asking to be photographed by passing rock fiends. Limekiln State Park is a fascinating point of meeting between the two major rock units. The Salinian Block, found on the east side of the Sur-Nacimiento fault in Limekiln Canyon, is made partly of cooled magma. The other materials the Salinian contains are metamorphosed sedimentary rocks from the Paleozoic era, which are often referred to as the Sur Series.

As far as I know, this is how it happened: Paleozoic sedimentary rock on the ocean floor metamorphosed under great pressure, was uplifted, and then later, got surrounded by granite magma coming up from below. Then it was moved along the San Andreas Fault to its current location, as I mentioned near the beginning of this post. Had we traveled to Limekiln Creek’s upper reaches near Cone Peak, far outside of the boundary of the park, we could have seen Sur Series rocks that are some of the oldest on California’s central coast, formed possibly over 500 million years ago.

On the west, oceanward side of the fault line through Limekiln Creek, Nacimiento Block rocks dominate, making up the cliffs that surround this beach. These are of a completely different origin from the Salinian rocks. Nacimiento Block rocks were laid down in horizontal layers that have since been tilted nearly vertical in many places. They’re a mixture of sedimentary and metamorphic material that formed in the ocean trench created by the ancestral Farallon plate’s subduction under the North American plate. This mixture includes a variety of deep sea rocks, such as graywacke (muddy sandstone), chert, greenstone, and the large deposit of limestone that gave rise to Limekiln Canyon’s long-ago industry.

For a small park, Limekiln had yielded large quantities of information about Big Sur's history. Our explorations had taken just a few hours. We still had plenty of time left in the day to see more. Breaks in the gray layers above had given us hope: maybe we could get above the fog if we drove up the side of a mountain. We drove north, in search of the road that would lead up to New Camaldoli Hermitage, where our campground host had told us the good views could be found.

This post is the first of two. To see more Big Sur photos, click here.

Comments

[joye]

Oh I love this post. You answered a lot of questions I had about limekilns and Big Sur. Wonderful photos as well. You capture that foggy feeling perfectly.

[Katsuaki]

Beautiful photos and informative narratives. I enjoyed reading it, thank you.
Just came back from the Pine Valley, just East of Big Sur. My first visit, and found to be very peaceful place.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/138263139@N03/albums/72157664552372153