Punta Barro: Big Sur’s newest geographical feature (photo credit: Rock Knocker)
The Santa Lucia Mountains are very young. At just 5 million years old, they are still in the process of being born – punching upward out of the Pacific faster than the forces of wind, waves, rain, and gravity can wear them down. Their steep, unstable seaward wall, rising to over 5,000 feet at Cone Peak, is constantly eroding, sliding and collapsing into the sea.
This natural process has been greatly accelerated since the 1930s, when the construction of Highway One undercut and activated treacherous slopes and old slide zones from one end of Big Sur to the other.
Mud Creek is one of those treacherous slopes. It’s not even really a creek; just a highly saturated mountainside that constantly oozes mud and water and tends to creep or slide downhill during the rainy season. It’s been a…
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