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Jug Handle Trail: Location 32

This drainage ditch exposes a cross-section of pygmy forest soil - a very thin humus layer of less than one inch, then three feet of leached podsol,1, and finally the reddish-brown, iron-rich hardpan. Below the hardpan is a layer of beach sand and gravel that lies on the graywacke2 sandstone bedrock. Compare this soil profile to that along the present-day ocean bluffs (location No. 3) - this one is three hundred thousand years older.

1 podzol (päd´zà): a type of light-colored, relatively infertile soil, poor in lime and iron, found typically in coniferous forests in cool, humid regions.
2 graywacke (–wak´): a nonporous, dark-colored sandstone containing angular grains and fragments of other rocks.