Leon Turnbull Photography

My initial plan was to hike to RCA Beach Falls then back to the car, and then drive to the Palomarin trailhead to do my second hike in the afternoon. However, the road to Palomarin was closed, apparently due to flooding. I saw no flooding on the road. So why the heck was it closed? There were a ton of people this day wanting to hike to Alamere Falls and they either turned back or had to walk an extra 5 miles. For no good reason whatsoever. Indeed I found out later according to the park website that I (and all the other people) were not even allowed to walk on the road. What is wrong with the park service, not letting people hike to Alamere Falls?

I had a second option. After hiking to RCA Beach Falls I would continue up the beach to Arroyo Hondo Falls (which I have been to before). I would then cross this creek and continue on my second hike to the other waterfalls and then I would hike back on the main road to my car. Now this would be interesting. Arroyo Hondo is a large creek. With all the rain we had it was very questionable that I could cross it at all. Well it was definitely flowing very strong but as it turned out it was not difficult to cross it. But did I even want to go on the second hike? It was too sunny. What would be the point of going to the other waterfalls? I sat down at Arroyo Hondo Falls and ate my lunch and thought about it for quite a long time. As I pondered the dilemma, I saw that clouds (and perhaps a storm) were coming in from over the ocean. It might actually cloud over in the afternoon. I decided to continue on. Of course the storm and clouds never materialized and it remained sunny all afternoon. Sigh.

I have not been to Bass Falls before. It requires a very low tide to access and perhaps a minus tide. It was not a minus tide today but it was low enough that I thought I would be able to make it if I timed it correctly. It was a beautiful and fun hike along the beach and I had no trouble making it to the waterfall. Now I just had to wait again for clouds to pass in front of the sun. Bass Falls is quite interesting. It looks very different now from pictures I have seen. There was a huge rock slide right in front of the waterfall. In addition to this the flow seems to be altered somehow up on top. It is not as photogenic as it used to be. Sometimes waterfalls are strange.

I retreated back along the beach. I could have gone the same way (via RCA Beach) but I decided that I had enough of beach walking for today. The rocky sections of the beach are very hard to walk on and my feet were quite sore. It might be a bit longer but I figured it would be a lot easier to hike on the road. Getting down to the Palomarin beach used to be very easy. This trail has also been washed out now. There is a very sketchy rope ladder to climb up the cliff and get onto the trail. It was very debatable if the rope was going to hold my weight. A fall here would have really hurt or involved breakage of bones. I made it up and once on the trail the going was very easy the rest of the way. I found out that the trail is actually closed because of the washout (but there were no signs down on the beach so how could I have known?). Once on the road I saw a lot of people walking, supposedly going to Alamere Falls (where else would they be going?). This made no sense to me. It was now 3pm and they had 6 miles to hike to Alamere Falls. There is no way they would even get to the waterfall before dark (never mind the hike back). Some of them seemed ill prepared, not even carrying any water (and most likely not carrying head lamps either). Why would you go on such a big hike so late in the day? People are strange, I think. It was a most fabulous day in Point Reyes National Seashore.