The long way to Alamere Falls
Started: 2023-06-21 20:34:31
Submitted: 2023-06-21 22:58:14
Visibility: World-readable
Hiking to Wildcat Beach and Alamere Falls at Point Reyes
We woke on Saturday morning, the 10th of June, at Glen backcountry campground in Point Reyes National Seashore. We cooked and ate breakfast on our campsite's picnic table, then set out to hike to the nearest beach. It was about 2.5 miles away, mostly downhill.
We set out on the trail to head to the beach. The trail the logical continuation of the loop trail we'd hiked in the day before, but it was the part of the trail that had been excluded from the wilderness so it was a dirt service road. It climbed steeply up the ridge (making me glad I was not carrying my whole pack, just the top section of the pack as a daypack) before leveling off at a long narrow meadow with a trail junction leading to a trail barely visible under the grass overhanging from both sides. Here the fog clung to the trees, thick enough to feel like a tangible thing, and the dew clung to the grass.
We took the side trail through the meadow and up the opposite hillside. Soon we joined the Coast Trail and the scenery abruptly changed into a dark foreboding pine forest. (This was the moment Julian announced that he had gotten stung by the stinging nettles, so Kiesa looked through the first aid kit in her pack to locate the sting kit with an antiseptic and anti-inflammatory wipe.)
The Coast Trail broke out of the dark forest and onto a scrub-covered hillside, still high above the ocean. Clouds hung over Drakes Bay like a low ceiling.The grass encroached on the trail again, fully engulfing Julian (he kept his hands up defensively in front of his face). The grass was barely tall enough to occasionally brush my face, but that was enough that I also tried to keep it at bay.
The grass cleared and the trail grew wider and we got our first good view of the ocean, barely distinguishable from the clouds above on the distant horizon.
From here we could look down onto Wildcat campground, one of the other backcountry campsites in the national seashore. This campground was perched just above the water in a broad field, holding just seven campsites, including a pair of group campsites.
We continued our descent to the ocean, now that we could actually see where we were going. The Coast Trail soon met the dirt service road again, where we encountered two different groups of people on horseback (including one group that asked me to take their picture on the trail). At the bottom of the hill we stopped at the campground's pit toilet (where some of the people around us said something about an injury on the beach, accompanied by the sight of a park ranger slowly driving down the service road towards us in a white SUV with a Park Service shield on the door).
The campground was almost on top of the beach (depending how the wind was blowing at any particular moment, we could hear the waves crashing below the cliffs; I wondered if it would be too loud and distracting to try to sleep there above the water), but actually getting down to the beach proved easier said than done. The road terminated right into the lagoon formed at the edge of the beach where a creek terminated, and the path across the lagoon around a low dirt-covered hillock involved a bit more scrambling than I expected.
As soon as we hopped across the rocks forming a ford across the lagoon and stepped onto the sand on the far side at the edge of the beach, I smelled an unpleasant marine stench that resembled rotting fish. We stepped over the high-tide mark and I saw a large sea lion carcass, at least two meters long. I took a picture and I'm going to provide the link here, rather than embedding the photo directly, in the event that my readers would prefer to choose for themselves whether they wish to see it.
We ate lunch on the beach, sitting on a log not far from the lagoon, but far enough from the sea lion so we didn't smell it. Two people came up and asked if we knew where the trail was, saying something about having visited the falls further down the beach. The trail was just on the other side of the lagoon, though getting around the lagoon to the trail was easier said than done.
I declared an optional side quest to visit the falls, and no one else took me up on the offer. (Everyone else had just picked up books, so they had something else to do.) I set off down the beach, keeping an eye on the waves (the tide was low but coming in; it wouldn't be high until evening). I could see the falls in the distance, cascading over the bluffs on the edge of the beach.
The Park Service has an entire page dedicated to Alamere Falls, including a warning about not following the unofficial (and unmaintained) trail to the cliff above the falls, being careful on the cliff because it's crumbling sandstone, and not scrambling down the cliff to reach the beach. When I reached the falls few people seemed to be heeding any of these warnings: there was a crowd of people on the cliff above the falls, and a line of people awkwardly sliding down a steep narrow gully. (It wasn't clear that anyone would be able to go back up the gully; the alternate route back was to hike a mile up the beach, turn right at the dead sea lion, find one's way around the lagoon, and hike back to the nearest trailhead to the south.)
My route to the falls was somewhat different than the shortest route (official or otherwise) from Palomarin Trailhead.
I walked back along the beach to the log where Kiesa was sitting while Julian played at the edge of the lagoon and tried to get as close as he could without actually getting wet. While hiking along the beach I had caught the occasional glimpse of activity off the coast but I hadn't taken the time to get a good view. Once I sat down on the log and watched the ocean I saw a whale breaching close to shore: the whale's head and flippers came straight up out of the water then crashed to the side before submerging again. A few seconds later I saw the whale's dorsal fin above the surface, then the whale disappeared again. I watched the whale as it drifted closer to shore then drifted away again. (I didn't even try to get a picture, because the only camera I had was my phone and without a good optical telephoto lens I didn't think I could get much more than a black triangle-shaped smudge.) After watching four or five breaches, followed by dorsal fins and blowhole sprays, I lay down on the beach for a sort-of nap. At one point I looked up at exactly the right moment to see another whale breach, perfectly framed by my narrow view of the ocean.
After a few hours on the beach we headed back across the lagoon to begin the hike back to camp. (This time I found a less-awkward crossing behind the berm next to the end of the trail.) We stopped for water at the campground, then hiked up the long and winding road leading back to camp. We took the more-direct route back to camp, following the road the whole way, climbing back into the clouds.
We arrived at camp too early for supper; there wasn't much to do at camp except eat. Soon we decided we could start boiling water to rehydrate our backpacking meals, which were not precisely fine dining, but were more than adequate to feed us while camping. For dessert we ate a rehydrated pudding that said "cheesecake" on the label, which was rather unlike cheesecake but did taste good.
After supper and cleanup, we retired to the tent to watch a movie on Kiesa's iPad until it was dark enough to go to sleep.
