Saturday, February 12, 2011

San Andreas Fault

Today we went walking up in the hills outside Palo Alto in search of the San Andreas fault. Fortunately there is a self guided tour of part of the fault in Los Trancos Open Space Preserve so we were not disappointed.

You can see a map of our self short hike (much of which Ruth did all by herself) below. The fault runs South-East to North-West on this map (from the most Eastern part of our track up through the middle of the big loop. Sadly, you can't see a giant chasm in the Earth, but you can see lots of geological features that are indicative of a fault:

  • Benches - flat road-like structures created when the crack in the fault fill with earth
  • Sag ponds - depressions where the land is not getting the support it needs
  • Strange ridges - ridges and valleys that run parallel to the contours rather than (more naturally) perpendicular to them
I'll post some pictures later. But for now, enjoy the map.