JANUARY 13, 2023

SANTA CRUZ, CALIFORNIA

It’s been raining for about a month now. 9 storms, one after the other, some with offshore waves 45 feet high. All this water comes crashing down on an eroding coastal street known as West Cliff Dr.

West Cliff Dr. curves along Monterey Bay. It is home to ocean front mansions, sure. Loads of joggers, and the cutest pups around. But it’s also one of a kind: lengthy, accessible, free. It’s a 3 mile flat paved trail curving along the best views Santa Cruz has to offer.

Every week this path comes alive with families who wouldn’t ordinarily get to watch multimillion dollar sunsets and teens who are having epic first dates. Every form of wheeled transit is there - cats in strollers, One Wheel enthusiasts - once I even spotted a miniature Luke Skywalker Landspeeder. Campers park their converted vehicles in front of those mega houses, gloriously blocking the view and puffing up a storm. Workers in the know pull up their trucks to eat lunch. And everywhere are glimpses of the seals, otters, sharks and whales of Monterey Bay.

West Cliff is that last great gasp of the keep-it-weird Santa Cruz, itself eroding.

It probably doesn’t make sense to fix any of this storm damage - expensive! inevitable! - to keep paving over the crumbling cliffs, to attempt to hold back the very rising of the seas. When you hear the term “managed retreat” - it makes sense. Why save a rich dude’s third house, suspended on the edge of the ocean, hanging on until the next storm?

Today, that there are rows of houses behind his, patiently waiting for their own chance to become oceanfront property. But that free, accessible ocean path - the idea that California belongs to something bigger than us humans?

That can wash away in tonight’s storm.

The damage is most evident from the air. Watch this drone zoom along the broken shore in the immediate aftermath.

Here the ice plant curves gracefully over the rip rap (giant rocks) added to protect against coastal erosion.

Now? The ice plant succulent, which is a somewhat controversial imported species, has been entirely ripped away. You can see some of the boulders supporting the bridge are no longer there.

Whole chunks of cliff have washed away here, leaving mats of the ice plant succulent hanging and swaying in the breeze. A sea cave is revealed (bottom left).

Cracks in the cliffs loosen enormous slabs of rock.

King tides in January pull the ocean away from shore at low tide, revealing the changes underneath our feet at Mitchell’s Cove. The sandy beach popular with local dogs has washed away, revealing long hidden sandstone underneath.

The beachy sand has washed away for the season, an excavation revealing smooth stone as tall as a man, previously hidden under beach blankets. Look for the tell tale green algae line in the rocks to see where the “ground” used to be.

The cliffs sound different at night: hollowed out, echoing, the ocean sucking out to sea in these newly uncovered holes.

Large rocks, driven down from the Sierras at enormous cost, are placed along the cliffs to immediately stabilize the road in January.

It continues to rain and storm until March 2023.