[Rockhounds] California’s Cliffs Are Collapsing One by One

[Alan Silverstein]

> Californias Cliffs Are Collapsing One by One
> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/07/californias-cliffs-are-collapsing-one-one/619462/

Lemme say this about that, having gone to college and taken a geology
class in California...  I'll assert the following, someone here can
correct me, and we'll all learn from that:

California falls into the ocean because it doesn't have a lot of rocks
like feldspar that contain much aluminum, which weathers into sticky
clay, and instead features low-Al stuff like serpentine, which is
slippery, and so are its weathering products.

Is that a fair oversimplification?  :-)

Yeah, yeah, I'm personally aware that parts of the state have a lot of
feldspar rocks, eg the Sierras; I've hiked Mount Whitney.  I'm just
thinking of the coastal regions.  In fact, while Colorado has 54-58
(depending on who you ask) Fourteeners (peaks over 14,000' in the silly
old system we use), not one of them is strictly a technical climb
(although a few are close); while of the ~13 Fourteeners in CA, about
half are evil granite spires you do NOT just scramble up.

Cheers,
Alan Silverstein