Foulweather Bluff

Foulweather Bluff is a cliff that lies on the north end of the Kitsap Peninsula along Puget Sound, on the east side of the entrance to the Hood Canal. It is one of the most prominent cliffs in Puget Sound.

The north face, which is bare, is 1⁄2-mile (0.80 km) wide and consists of vertical, grayish sand and clay bluffs. The highest cliff is 225 feet (69 m) high, sloping off to the east to a bluff 40 feet (12 m) high. On the Hood Canal side, the point is steep and high. A marsh, enclosed by a sand spit and marked by a light, extends about 500 yards from the base of the bluff on the Hood Canal side. The top of the bluff is covered by Alder, Cedar, Hemlock, Maple, fir and a few other species of trees and underbrush, mainly Salmon berry, Thimble berry and Ocean Spray. There are presently seven residential homes across the North face (Dec. 2012). The private Mirth airstrip (WA-22) runs North and South about mid-way between Skunk Bay to the East and Hood Canal on the West. The Bluff is unprotecred at its base from wave and tidal action except for about 500 feet bulkheaded on the Northwest corner. Erosion from frost and mud slides has taken more than eleven feet off the face of the unbulkheaded bluff in the last forty years and all that material is swept away on the tides to muddy the waters and become sediment in the deeps of Puget Sound and Admiralty Inlet. From the high spot the sweeping view includes the Hood Canal and floating bridge, South, the Cascade Mountains from Mount Rainier to Mount Baker, East, Whidby Island, Mount Aerie near Anacortes, Mount Constitution on Orcas Island, Marrowstone and Indian Islands to the North. Rainfall is about 25 inches year 10 inches less than Seattle 35 miles Southeast. Wind usually Northerly in the summer (May-September) and from the South in winter months. Surrounding waters (50-55 deg.F.) moderates the local air temperature keeping the Bluff area cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter than that of the Great Peninsula of Kitsap County.

Foulweather Bluff was named by George Vancouver in 1792, due to the rough weather he experienced there.

Famous quotes containing the word bluff:

    When people are taken out of their depths they lose their heads, no matter how charming a bluff they may put up.
    F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)