Torrey Pines Natural Reserve

By Laura Whitmore

When scientists work we play.

And when work demands we take a break, we play some more.

Here in San Diego, CA the 27 scientists aboard the NOAA R/V Ronald H. Brown eagerly await departure. In the meantime, we are filling our days with the adventure San Diego has to offer – from city blocks to nature walks.

Today six of us took a rental car to Torrey Pines Nature Reserve. The beach here is marbled with light and dark sand and littered or laden with cobblestones, depending on where you walk. The darker color in the sand is actually a magnetic mineral aptly named magnetite! The cliffs nearby are a sandstone formation, so as we hiked through the area we found ourselves exploring several different geologic formations, comprised of different mineral features. Not only is the beach a beautiful place to enjoy an afternoon, but the Nature Reserve offers several short trails that show off geological and biological highlights. The trails lead you up to a bluff that at a maximum is about 300 feet above the beach below. I suppose the park is most well-known for the Torrey Pines on the bluffs, which are unique to the area and are an endangered species. But, I enjoyed the bluffs the most, which boast rich geological features. You can see concretions, which are created as rainwater dissolves minerals in the sandstone. The minerals are deposited again and form a rock that is harder than the surrounding sandstone. As the sandstone erodes, these concretions eventually will fall out of the cliffs and onto the beach below. Additionally, there were fissure features (pictures below). Fissured cliffs like these are created also by rainwater eroding the sandstone. For more information, check out the Torrey Pines Nature Reserve website: torreypine.org – which is where I got a lot of information about the local geology.