Dec 24, 20192 min read

Adventure at Little River Punchbowl and Sea Cave

Updated: Dec 26, 2019

Thought I would recap my adventure with Teri Ridlon at Van Damme State Park's Little River Punchbowl in Mendocino, CA.

We were told about a sea cave that you could climb down to with a rope so we had to check it out.

The bowl itself was surrounded by a fence.

This was looking down at the cave from above. Even before descending we could hear and feel the thunder cracks as the waves hit the cave.

With super steep walls, it turns out there was only one way down and it was essentially a mudslide with a rope in the middle. We figured the rope was doable but that our feet would quickly side out from under us.

We hoped there was another way down on the ocean-side of the cave but after walking around and exploring, we ruled this out and circled back to the mudslide to reconsider.

One at a time, we made our way down without any accidents . . . probably not the wisest idea but hey we did it.

It had been raining here in Fort Bragg for many days and we finally had this beautiful, sunny day so we felt we had to make the most of it.

We also had timed it so we had a negative tide to catch the water as far out of the cave as possible.

We were both streaked with mud by the time we made our way to the bottom. The rope, also covered in slippery mud, had knots most of the way but would then have stretches were there were no knots at all - thankfully there were no slips or rope burns.

Teri on the way down