Photography and more: Abandon Pier at Davenport, California

What: Abandon Pier at Davenport

Where: This is one of those places you can see, know it's a sweet spot but don't know how to get to. Davenport is about 9 mile North of Santa Cruz. Photographers love this area.

When: Just another boring weekend. I would love to come back and face this cliff another sunny, less cloudy day w/o second thought.

How: We got there around 4pm, about 1 hr before sunset. When we got there, I started to have doubt if we could really climb down this 80 degree, more than 50ft high cliff with about 7-8 ft section of all sand, no rocks to hold on to. I was checking in with my cousin to see if he's sure he wants to do this. Next thing I know he's already 5ft down the cliff while I was trying to put away my flash light. LOL.

So I waited until he's safely got down to where he could stand on his feet with out holding on to the rope. Oh btw, there were 2 guys down there already when we got there. They had the rope tied to the pole on top. It's about 100ft long. So bring 1 if you planning to really go down.

My turn! I'm 5'6" ~170lbs and go to gym 2-4 times a week. Just to let you know so you can compare. I had little problems going down but it's doable. Until the sandy 7ft section where all you holding on to is the rope which is rubber band like. hahaha I made it safely to where he was standing. And what do you know, we were still ~10ft above the sand, so we climb on the wood structure there. Finally made it to the sweet sweet spot every photographer love to have the stair to walk to.

We did a series of shoot down there. Bottom line: it is what it is. You can only do so many angle, after awhile you are pretty much done with it. It was a very cloudy day as weather.com call it "partly cloudy". So we took off a bit early before the dark hit us we have no idea how to get up being the first time down there. Some guys were down there until the tie got up for a better cloudy effect. But I had ND4 and ND8 earlier on my mainly used for this trip Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 and Nikon D90. Climbing up was not as easy as going down. Going down required your gut, going up required your gut and muscle. Especially the sandy section where you depend entirely on the rope and your knees, elbows. But yes, I made it.

Here are the results. Please DO NOT take the photo w/o permission. Give us some credit.

Oh... BTW, if you are gonna get some ND filter, go big and get something that are glass ~$100 for 1 screw on ND filter. People said you can get 1 biggest to fit your set of lens (say 77mm) and get a set of step down/up adaptor for all other lens. I had Cokin P series set with me at the time. I did what it suppose to and MORE which give me a serious color shift to red. I had to edit WB from raw file in photoshop to bring it back.