Red Car Property: Mudwatch Near Adelbert

Photos: Red Car Property Neighbor January 16, 2023.

Another predictable mudslide is below properties on Adelbert Ave, flowing down the Red Car Property.  This Red Car Property slope was stabilized and restored in 2009, after a 2005 slide.

Lesson: plant these slopes with native trees to help hold them together.  At least toss some found acorns on the slope from the nearby Coast Live Oak or Black Walnuts from the once plentiful natives adjacent Adelbert. just north of this location. And stop clear cutting young native trees which do repopulate slopes.

This crumbling slope and mudslide is in the same stretch on the Red Car Property's Lot C.  The same craftsman home is in both photos.
 

Red Car Canyon: Mudwatch for Lake View Ave

Photos: Red Car Property Neighbor, January 12, 2023.  

Around the 6” of rain earlier this week brought predictable mudslides and a downed tree just north of the mudslide on the Lake View Ave side of Red Car Canyon.  This slope is Red Car Property up to the fence line.  There are public utility  easements along the property line.

The Red Car Property owner chopped down all the young trees on this slope and throughout the property without regard to size or species. There were a number of young protected Coast Live Oak and California Black Walnut trees that managed to recover from the 2016 fire.  While this slope did not burn it was severely damaged by the heat.  

Most of the shrub-like plants in the above photo are remnants of trees that keep trying grow back every year after brush clearance.  I speculate the total disregard for hillside ecosystems is intentional, as it is common developer tactic to kill off as many trees as possible through neglect or removal in advance of development application.  

Over 30 years, we’ve seen the slope slide below and around the sewer outlet (the round concrete feature topped with green spray paint, adjacent the large tree at the fence line in photo).

In recent years, City contractors replaced sewer lines in the slope along the property line between the Red Car Property and homes above on Lake View.

In 2009 the Red Car Property owner repaired a  2005 landslide on the Adelbert end of the Red Car Property. 

It is a very steep slope cut for the Red Car Trolley in 1904.  Since the tracks were removed in 1955, a forest of trees repopulated the slope.  

Red Car Canyon: First Tree Down

Photos: Red Car Property Neighbor, January 12, 2023.  

A large Eucalyptus tree went down on the Lake View Ave side of Red Car Canyon. 

We’ve seen a number of Eucalyptus go down in the same part of the canyon over the past 3 decades.  

Eucalyptus do not hold hillsides together like native Coast Live Oak, Black Walnut and Toyon.

  

 

Red Car Canyon: Swampy

Photos: Red Car Property Neighbor, January 12, 2023.  

Two days after a major storm dumped around 6” of rain on the neighborhood, Red Car Canyon was swampy but walkable.

Just stop driving through the canyon. The Red Car Property is not a park, but it still looks like one.

The pine tree leaning at a 45 degree angle has been been held up by another tree for decades.

Corralitas Red Car Property: Mudwatch

 Photos: Red Car Property Neighbor January 12, 2023.

Lake Corralitas and a familiar mudslide returned on the south end of the property.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.