April Waterfall Visits - Alamere Falls 4/9/06

It seems like April is turning out to be the month that I visit waterfalls that drop off cliffs on to beaches. The first April waterfall I visited was the 50 ft Alamere Falls. My department at work has been planning a hiking outing for a while. The hike to Alamere Falls in Point Reyes National Seashore was a research hike to see if it was an appropriate trail for that outing. It turns out that it is on the long side and it has a lot of issues (such as poison oak and stinging nettle) that are not optimal for people who have not been hiking before.

The trail directly to the top of the falls is 8.4 miles round trip. About a mile of that though is unmaintained. The hiking book that I have noted that it is often overgrown with poison oak. Yup, we saw a lot of poison oak on the sides of the trail. Yup, I got it as well. It is a good thing that I am not super allergic to it. I just got a few weepy patches of it but no major itching (thank goodness! the itching of poison oak is the worst). I actually haven't had poison oak for years. The last time I got it though when I was a little girl, I got it bad. I was almost completely pink with Calamine lotion and the itching drove me crazy. This time it just looks really bad.

Since we were on a research hike we hiked the spur trail to the top of the falls and back then we continued northwest on to the backpakers camp and back southeast down the beach to the base of the falls and back for a 7 hour trek covering 14.25 miles. I was tired!! I was proud of myself though for being able to make it even though I ended up with blisters and very sore muscles. A couple of years ago I wouldn't have. My training for my goal of hiking Half Dome in Yosemite has paid off already. I have lost 15 lbs since October and I have gained a lot of muscle! I confirmed all over again that my hiking boots are terrible for long hikes and for hikes where I gain any elevation at all. I recently purchased a book called "Fixing Your Feet" and I will be employing some of the tricks in there to try to prevent the blisters that I get.

Besides being long the hike was quite pleasant. We had pleasant weather, it only started to rain on us a couple of times, and it was not cold. There were a decent amount of people out on the trail that day enjoying the wildflowers, wildlife, and the ocean vistas.

Alamere Falls - Rating 3


I was delighted to see this waterfall from the very top and the very bottom. It is quite pretty but it doesn't have any wow factor. It would be a very nice place to have a picnic though. I would also go out of my way to see it again.








I also used my new GPS trainer during this hike. I was quite impressed with it. The neatest thing about it was that it makes a map of the readings it takes. The map that it created taking readings looked like the map in the book! The software that came with it also has a function where it will graph several things such as elevation, heart rate, pace, and grade. I am looking forward to using it more in future hikes.