A scare at the beach

On my long northward beach walks, I’ve passed this spot several times. The sign says this is a marine preserve. Kind of odd, since this place is a few hour’s walk on a difficult beach — not a stroll on sandy shores, but beaches sloping sharply in places, rock-hopping and rock scrambling the mode du jour. I’ve never seen footprints here.

So I’ve been looking up above this little beach framework at the hill above, trying to figure out if there was some way to get to this spot from an inland road. It looked like there were more hills above the top of this ridge, and maybe a way to get here without the long beach walk. Mountain bike, heh-heh.

I had on hiking shoes with Vibran soles, and started up the little gully. Lot of sliding rocks. About halfway up, it got steeper, more sliding rocks, and I had to start going up on the diagonal, criss-crossing back and forth. By this time I was on all fours, crawling up. Any steeper and I wouldn’t have made it.

About 20 feet from the top I saw these cracks in the soil, hmmm, kind of deep… But in typical Taurus M. O., I kept scrambling up. Got to see over…

I got just below the top and had a funny feeling. When I inched up and peered over the top, I was looking about 500 feet down to a beautiful isolated cove with breaking waves. One part of me was saying, get your camera out, this is spectacular, but another, stronger part of me was scared shitless. I was on terra infirma, and the cliff sloped inward underneath me. And, fuck, there were CRACKS! I started backing down. Please, lords of karma, don’t let this cliff crumble. Backwards on hands, knees, stomach, all on top of sliding rocks, heart pounding.

Not smart…