Coast ·
A field guide to the bluff trail
Four miles, one gate, and about six things worth stopping for. What to look at between the front door and the point.
The bluff trail starts at the gate past the Cliff Houses and runs four miles north to the point. It is flat, it is unshaded, and it takes most people a little over two hours with the stops. These are the stops.
The first half mile
Coastal prairie, which is a polite name for grass that has been sculpted by wind into something closer to a haircut. Look for the bush lupine that flowers violently blue in April and looks dead for the rest of the year. It is not dead.
The reef
At a mile the trail passes above the reef where the tide-pool walks go. From the top you can read the whole structure — the surge channels running perpendicular to the shore, the flat mid-tide bench, the deep pools at the outer edge that only clear at a minus tide.
The cypress row
Planted as a windbreak by a rancher in the twenties and now the most photographed thing on the property that we did not plant. They lean uniformly inland at about fifteen degrees, which is a fairly precise record of the prevailing wind.
The point
Elephant seals from December, cormorants year round on the stack, and the best whale-watching angle on this stretch because the shelf comes close in. Turn around here — the trail continues but crosses onto land that is not ours to send you across.