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Alamere Falls

Length 8.3–15.6 mi · Climbing 1350–2630 ft

California > San Francisco Bay Area > Point Reyes National Seashore

Alamere Falls. The tide is at 2 feet in this picture.

Alamere Falls is is a spectacular waterfall that cascades onto a scenic beach. It’s one of the Bay Area’s most popular hiking destinations: on a nice weekend afternoon the trail from the Palomarin trailhead is a nearly continuous stream of people. Unfortunately the falls can also be an unusually hazardous hiking destination, and there isn’t any reliably safe way to reach them. Ironically the danger only seems to add to the falls’ popularity by making the hike that much more exhilirating.

Check the tide and surf forecast before hiking. Sometimes the beach is built up enough that you can reach the falls even at high tide, but at other times the beach gets eroded by heavy surf, and it’s not possible to reach the falls unless the tide is below about 3 feet for the Palomarin route or 0 feet for all other routes.

The falls are at their most spectacular right after spring storms which, of course, is when high waves and low beach levels make getting there the most dangerous. Over the summer the falls reduce to an unimpressive trickle, but the beach route gets easier.

Here are four possible routes to the falls.

Palomarin route

Length 8.3 mi · Climbing 1350 ft

The route that everyone takes, even though it uses a hazardous off-trail shortcut that results in people needing to be rescued almost every week.

Palomarin Beach route

Length 13.8 mi · Climbing 1850 ft

The park-recommended route involves a one-mile walk on a beach. At the very end is a large rock that may not be safe to get around, even at low tide.

Five Brooks route

Length 14.5 mi · Climbing 2630 ft

A little-used alternate route that starts from the Five Brooks Trailhead, where it’s much easier to find parking. At the end is the sometimes-impassible beach.

Bear Valley route

Length 15.6 mi · Climbing 2160 ft

This route is long but relatively easy for its length, and there’s plenty of parking. Also requires walking on the sometimes-impassible beach.

More information

Jane Huber’s BAHiker web site has a page on the Palomarin route.
Gurmeet Singh Manku has a page on the Palomarin route, including some pictures of the final scramble down to the beach.
FindMyMoyo.com has some pretty good pictures of the falls.
The graphs below show how many vehicles drive up to the Palomarin trailhead on an average day. Since this is averaged over the entire week, nice summer weekends could be about 3 or 4 times busier.

Average number of cars per day at the Palomarin trailhead, based on NPS statistics.