SAN DIEGO — With the rain and gray clouds giving way to blue skies and sunshine, many hikers have been heading out to Torrey Pines to hike the cliffsides along the beautiful San Diego coastline, but should the rains-soaked cliffs be cause for concern? CBS 8 asked a geology expert about it.
“It did seem like a lot of it had caved out from the rain, so I was a little bit worried walking around,” said Tori Aguila, who hiked the cliffside trail near the glider port at Black’s Beach Monday. “For the most part, it seemed pretty sturdy, but it was always in the back of my mind that I was afraid that I was going to fall.”
A cliff collapse was caught on video at Black’s Beach in January 2023 following several rainstorms that had passed through the region.
“It wasn’t just the cliff collapsing, it actually lifted up the beach as well, so we’re seeing a bit of a curved slide surface where this huge mass rotated down and cascaded into the ocean,” said Dr. Pat Abbott, Professor of Geology Emeritus at San Diego State University.
“There are huge blocks of rock just sitting there tilted on the hillside, and tilt does not last. Gravity does not like that. Those are going to come down too.”
Dr. Abbott says the added water from rain adds weight to the cliffside that causes clay minerals to swell and lose strength. He says cracking on the side of a cliff is one sign that it’s unstable.
“Sometimes when you look at something, you say, ‘Wow, what’s holding that rock up there? Why doesn’t it fall down?’ Well, it is going to fall down. Don’t you be there when it comes down,” warned Dr. Abbott.
The access trail at Beacon’s Beach in Leucadia has been closed for more than a month now after a landslide was reactivated there.
“It’s a bummer but I’m also glad they’re kind of being protective with this,” said Leucadia resident Lynn Heller-Altona.
She and husband Chris don’t take any chances when walking the beach in case there of a cliff failure.
“We typically only want to walk when there’s a low tide and then we walk really close to the break as opposed to up against the cliffs,” said Heller-Altona.
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