them changes - Ruby Beach

[squirl033]

for those of you familiar with Ruby Beach, here's a photo taken yesterday afternoon... there have been some heavy-duty changes in the landscape out there. apparently a storm rearranged the beach. where there was a gravel ridge that acted as a dam to form a deep pond in the stream, and the beach above the high-tide line used to be littered with driftwood, there's now just a very flat, shallow slope toward the water, and most of the driftwood is either upstream in the creek, or washed away completely. just off to the right, out of the photo, the gravel slope is more or less intact, and most of the driftwood is still there, but from the south side of the stream north to the rocks, everything's different. you can't get across the stream to the rocks now unless you either have waders or are willing to get wet - the stream looked about a foot deep, maybe more - though you might be able to cross farther out on the beach at low tide...

here are a couple of older shots, showing how the beach used to look...

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and here's the new version... Ruby 2.0...

 

[BobH]

Thanks for the update... Bet a lot of photographers are going to miss that ponded area, it was so great for reflections!

I'm also guessing somebody might put a logs across the stream sooner or later so you could get across.

 

[squirl033]

Thanks for the update... Bet a lot of photographers are going to miss that ponded area, it was so great for reflections!

I'm also guessing somebody might put a logs across the stream sooner or later so you could get across.

yeah, that pond definitely offered some nice photo ops, and the kids loved it in summer! it's wierd how much flatter that whole area is now... there really was quite a little ridge built up, stuff the waves had pushed up onto the beach, with lots of logs that you had to climb over to get to the beach... all that's gone now. if you follow the shadow of my tripod straight up to the top, that's all that's left of the pond, and just to the right of that is the creek itself. there aren't near enough logs up in there to account for all the "missing timber", so i'm guessing a lot of it just got washed away. it's about the most dramatic change i've ever seen out there. just for reference, the first photo in this set was taken in February of this year. the second one was shot in 2005...

i expect some enterprising souls will lay one or more logs across the stream somewhere, but it'd have to be upstream a ways. the beach is so flat now that what used to be the pond is now a tidal basin, and at high tide, it's probably a lot fuller. the waves going back up that stream looked like a miniature Bay of Fundy, even though the tide had been on the way out for almost 3 hours by the time i got there... any logs small enough for people to move to lay across the creek would probably only last till the next high tide...

 

[JaniceL]

Amazing how nature changes the landscapes. You never know she might like it better with the ponded area and bring it back.