Golden Hour Low Tide Photography Calendar 2026: La Push, Garibaldi, Monterey, La Jolla

The 2026 dawn season is over. The August 10–13 run at La Push and Garibaldi was the year's last golden-hour low tide at sunrise, and no remaining 2026 window at these four stations puts a low within 90 minutes of sunrise with 30 daylight minutes to work with. What's left belongs to winter sunsets — and the geography has flipped south. The best remaining window is Friday, December 25 at La Jolla, CA (NOAA station 9410230): a −1.72 ft low at 4:33 PM, 16 minutes before sunset, scoring 90 of 100. Monterey's December 23 and 24 both score 80; the north tops out at Fair.

What counts as a golden-hour low tide?

Two clocks have to agree. The tide clock decides how much reef and wet sand you get; the sun clock decides whether the light on it is worth carrying a tripod for. For each station Tidewindow crosses NOAA's harmonic tide predictions with the sun's computed position and keeps the windows where a deep low lands near sunrise or sunset. Each window carries two solar numbers alongside its 0–100 score: the sun's azimuth at the moment of the low, and the offset in minutes between the low and the nearest sunrise or sunset (negative means the sun is below the horizon at the low). The golden-hour tool computes this live for every station we track; the formulas, including the scoring, are on the methodology page.

The mechanism explains the whole calendar. The low arrives roughly 30–60 minutes later each day — at La Push last August it stepped 5:23, 6:13, 6:58, 7:39 AM over the 10th–13th — while the sun's edges move slowly. Each spring-tide run therefore crosses sunrise or sunset on only a few days, and those crossing days, deep water out and sun at the horizon, are what this page collects. In summer the crossings happen at dawn; in winter the deep lows shift to mid-afternoon and cross the early sunset instead.

Which evenings top the current list?

One best window per station from the remaining 2026 data, ranked by score:

Computed 2026-10-02 from NOAA predictions at stations 9410230, 9413450, 9442396, and 9437540, October 2 – December 31, 2026. "Low vs. sun edge" is minutes between the low and the nearest sunrise or sunset; positive means the sun is up. December 25 is a federal holiday.

Read down the table and the season's new geography is plain. In August the light belonged to the north: every Good-or-better window fell at La Push or Garibaldi while Monterey and La Jolla bottomed out before sunrise. Winter reverses the whole arrangement. Now every remaining window on this calendar that scores Good or better — all 19 of them — is a minus tide at Monterey or La Jolla, and the northern pair never climbs past Fair: their deep December lows arrive 46–51 minutes after sunset, in the dark. Same arithmetic, opposite winners.

What does the azimuth number tell you?

Azimuth is a compass bearing for the sun. NOAA's solar glossary defines it as "measured clockwise from true north to the point on the horizon directly below the object" — so 0° is north, 90° east, 180° south, 270° west. Every remaining 2026 window in this calendar puts the sun between 225° and 269°: southwest to west, out over the water.

Stand facing the Pacific and that sun is in front of you — the reverse of the summer dawn geometry. Practically:

• Backlight is the default. Sea stacks, rock arches, and people on the reef become silhouettes against the bright water; meter for the sky and let the foreground go dark, or bracket.
• Shadows point inland. A shadow falls opposite the azimuth — subtract 180° and these windows throw shadows toward 45°–89°, northeast to east: away from the surf, behind your subjects.
• Wet sand becomes a mirror. A low sun over the ocean reflects off every exposed, water-slicked surface the minus tide uncovers — the one time of year the deepest foreground and the brightest light share a bearing.
• Front light is gone for the year. Nothing sunrise-side qualifies again in 2026; the warm, even, sun-behind-you light on the reef returns with the summer dawn runs.

The station calendars

The top six remaining 2026 windows per station, ranked by score. "Low vs. sun edge" is minutes from the predicted low to the nearest sunrise or sunset; negative lows happen in twilight. All remaining windows are on the sunset side of the day.

La Jolla, CA (NOAA station 9410230)

Computed 2026-10-02 from NOAA station 9410230 predictions.

The year's best remaining window anywhere on this calendar: Christmas Day's −1.72 ft low lands 16 minutes before sunset — depth and horizon light in the same quarter hour. The day before is deeper (−1.88 ft, the deepest remaining low on this page) with a full sunlit hour before the sun reaches the water. Thanksgiving week offers a quieter rehearsal: November 26's −1.40 ft low lands 3 minutes after sunset, and November 25's −1.51 ft low arrives with 48 minutes of sun still to go. Dates, access points, and the reef itself are covered in our La Jolla tide pools guide.

Monterey, CA (NOAA station 9413450)

Computed 2026-10-02 from NOAA station 9413450 predictions.

Monterey's dormant season, promised back in August, has arrived on schedule: a three-day Great run December 23–25. The 23rd keeps the sun up through the low (38 minutes of margin); the 24th trades that for depth, its −1.83 ft low arriving 9 minutes after sunset with the window's best light in the half hour before. Note the sunset times — around 4:56 PM in late December — and that the 24th's and 25th's lows are after sunset: the shoot is the falling tide, not the low itself. The Pacific Grove guide covers the same run from the tidepooling side, after-sunset lows labeled.

La Push, WA (NOAA station 9442396)

Computed 2026-10-02 from NOAA station 9442396 predictions.

August's champion is winter's also-ran: every remaining La Push low with real depth arrives well after sunset. The honest picks are the shallow sun-edge crossers — December 21's −0.66 ft low lands 2 minutes before sunset, November 22's −0.42 ft eleven minutes after — twilight shoots on a falling tide rather than deep reef in full light. Access homework still applies: Olympic National Park's conditions page states "Mora Road is closed to all traffic for construction from July 8–Oct. 15, 2026," with Rialto Beach not accessible via Mora Road during that period. Every window above falls after the scheduled end date, but a construction schedule is not a verified reopening — check the park's conditions page before planning a Rialto shoot. Second Beach, a 0.7-mile forest trail off La Push Road, doesn't depend on Mora Road; our La Push guide covers the trail and the sea stacks.

Garibaldi, OR (NOAA station 9437540)

Computed 2026-10-02 from NOAA station 9437540 predictions.

Same story as La Push, one notch shallower, which has been Garibaldi's role all year. December 21 is the sun-edge pick — a −0.64 ft low 2 minutes after sunset — and the nearest-term option is Sunday, October 25: −0.71 ft at 7:02 PM, 49 minutes after sunset, a blue-hour tide rather than a golden-hour one.

The August dawn run, for the record

The tables below are the dawn season's closing act as this page tracked it, computed 2026-08-02 and verified against the committed predictions. They are history now — the run played out August 10–13, and nothing at sunrise qualifies again in 2026.

La Push (August 2026)

August 11 was the dawn-crosser — its −2.18 ft low landed 4 minutes after sunrise, the closest any 2026 window came to the sun-just-up moment — while the 12th and 13th traded that precision for depth and a longer, brighter morning.

Garibaldi (August 2026)

Monterey (August 2026)

Monterey's August showed the trade the south faced all summer: its deepest low sat 76 minutes before sunrise, and nothing cracked Good. The December tables above are the payoff this page promised then.

La Jolla (August 2026)

All August tables computed 2026-08-02 from NOAA predictions at the stations named; retained as history.

The flip, in arithmetic

Why the north won August and the south wins December comes down to when the deep lows land versus when the sun's edges sit. At La Push, the daylight minus tides are thinning — 3 in October, 5 in November, 4 in December (computed 2026-10-02 from NOAA station 9442396 predictions) — and the deep ones land after the early winter sunset: November 24's −1.84 ft low at 6:14 PM has 32 minutes of its window in daylight; December 23's −1.97 ft low at 6:03 PM has 39. The depth is there; the light has left before it arrives. Farther south the same spring cycles put their lows an hour or two earlier relative to local sunset, which is all the difference: Monterey and La Jolla land −1.7 to −1.9 ft lows inside the golden hour itself.

The same late-December spring cycle drives the deepest remaining tidepooling windows on the coast — if the camera is optional, the La Jolla guide and Pacific Grove guide cover that side of the water, and the king tides page has the winter high-water dates.

How early should you arrive?

An hour before the low is the standard answer — La Jolla's December 25 arrive-by is 3:33 PM for the 4:33 PM low — but photographers have a better one: the window's opening time. That window opens at 1:45 PM, which buys you the whole falling tide with the sun already low. Pull any station's upcoming windows, with arrive-by times and these sun offsets, from the golden-hour tool. The tide does the composition twice a month. For the rest of 2026, it does it at sunset, in the south.