The Explorers Club, Northern California Chapter

Foray to the Marin Headlands with Mike Diggles

The Golden GateAway included a set of Forays before the formal gathering Saturday evening. This Foray was a day hike just north of the Golden Gate in what is called Tennessee Valley. It is in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, just north of the Marine Mammal Center. It left from Tam Junction, Mill Valley right off Highway 1. It is an amazingly flat walk through an old farm to a beach. Lots of wildlife... great spot to see bobcats at the right time of day, but on other days than ours. Dan Sealy of the National Park Service (and undergraduate-days hiking buddy of the Foray leader) recommended this outing as the valley has a little stream through the middle and we can sit on a small beach as a reward. The day was fairly clear, but there was just enough mist out to see that we couldn't see the Farallon Islands. We were still able to think back to the days just 10,000 years ago during the Pleistocene when you could walk all the way out to them. As the San Andreas Fault runs between our beach and the Farallon Islands, those rocks would have been a hundred meters farther south back then. Those rocks, in fact, came up along the San Andreas Fault from the southern Sierra Nevada but that took more like several tens of millions of years.

Foray loading up on lunch prepared by Barbara Franks [photograph by Mike Diggles]

Will Patterson negotiating rough terrain [photograph by Mike Diggles]

Mike Diggles, FN-92 [photograph by Don Bessey]

Take only pictures; leave only footprints and wheelchair tracks [photograph by Mike Diggles]

Lunch Bunch out at the beach at the mouth of Tennessee Valley [photograph by Mike Diggles]

Don Bessey, MN-82 and Mike Diggles [photograph by Bernie Krause]

Bernie Krause, FN-93 [photograph by Mike Diggles]

Katherine Krause [photograph by Mike Diggles]

David Smith, MN-83 [photograph by Mike Diggles]

Charlie Southall, MN-91 [photograph by Mike Diggles]

Eleanor Patterson [photograph by Mike Diggles]

Lebe Patterson, Vimy 19|94 [photograph by Mike Diggles]

Bill Patterson, Vimy 19|94 [photograph by Mike Diggles]

Mike Diggles, Ellie and Will Patterson [photograph by Bernie Krause]

Exotics dinner, Friday night [photograph by Mike Diggles]

Exotics dinner, Friday night [photograph by Mike Diggles]

Golden Gate-Away, Saturday night [photograph by Mike Diggles]

Golden Gate-Away, Saturday night [photograph by Mike Diggles]

Golden Gate-Away, Saturday night; Mike Diggles and Martha Gilmore [photograph by Dana Isherwood]

Golden Gate-Away, Saturday night; Bernie and Katherine Krause [photograph by Dana Isherwood]
Date created: 10/23/1996
Last modified: 06/21/2015
Web page by: Mike Diggles, Webmaster, Northern California Chapter of the Explorers Club
email Mike

Back to The Explorers Club, Northern California Chapter Home Page