Looking at the tectonic block that sits between the historic and Quaternary traces of the San Andrea fault near Table Mountain, in the Santa Cruz Mtns.
This time, starting at the saddle in the middle of the block and heading south east to the down stream end of the block. There are 2 large grassy meadows on top of this portion that seem to be quite popular with the local deer population.
I made it to within sight of the crossing of Stevens Creek at Lower Table Mtn. Trail, but was unable to get all the way to the bottom of the block. The ridge gets very narrow and is covered with heavy brush, with steep slopes on each side that prevent bypassing the brushy areas. I was able to descend via a game trail back to the Canyon Trail.
I had initially planned to hike this block a few years ago when I accidentally stumbled on the old trail along Water Wheel Creek:
• Trail Along Waterwheel...
The hill shade maps really help to show the land forms, especially when combined with the USGS fault maps on Google Earth.
Paper: ENVIRONMENTAL GEOLOGIC ANALYSIS OF THE MONTEBELLO RIDGE MOUNTAIN STUDY AREA:
babel.hathitru...
"TECTONIC BLOCKS - Large angular to rounded, commonly elliptically shaped masses of relatively hard rocks surrounded by a clay-rich. sheared matrix. Occurs within shear zones and fault gouge. In the shear zones of the Franciscan' rocks, these' blocks range from fist size to masses more than one mile long."
USGS National Map Viewer w/ Hill Shade:
apps.nationalm...
USGS Quaternary Faults data:
earthquake.usg...
Download the "qfaults.kmz" file from the link on the page, then import that into Google Earth.
Tip: Zoom into your area of interest BEFORE turning on one of the layers. I recall this file has the fault traces, landslide areas and geologic units for a large area and it'll bring your device to a crawl if you enable one of these layers zoomed way out.
You can see how the Canyon Trail, that's mostly built on an old ranch road, follows the historic trace of the San Andreas fault.
More to come...
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