Two-Heel Drive

Murietta Falls musings:

The thing to do when you’re already hiking 12 miles with over 4,300 feet of uphill climb is to tag a few more on because the view’s a little better.

Another thing to do is stand in water with with confidence because your boots are waterproof, then finding out otherwise when you’ve got seven more miles of hiking ahead of you.

Yet another thing to do is play hooky from work — I didn’t, but I met a couple guys who did. I did get a somewhat similar sensation, though, when I was driving into Livermore and seeing 19,473 cars lined up in the other direction, presumably all to their jobs somewhere else. Poor wretches.

Because it’s my blog and I can toss common sense on the breeze, I can wait till now to tell you that the water’s raging at Murietta Falls. There’s so much water in the creek at Williams Gulch that you’ll have a hard time getting across with your feet dry. Sadly, there’s no rain in the forecast this week so the flow will probably be quite a bit slower next weekend. But the chance to do the hike on a sunny day might be worth it — also, I saw the first hints of wildflowers here and there; the poppies could be poppin’ soon.

For those unfamiliar with the pleasures of hiking to Murietta Falls: It’s about six miles one way from the Lichen Bark Picnic Area at Del Valle Regional Park near Livermore. Getting there entails one epic climb on from the parking lot to Rocky Ridge, then going downhill to Williams Gulch, then slogging up for another epic climb on the Big Burn (steep, yes, but also one of the prettiest stretches of single-track trail in the East Bay.) After that you go back down a few hundred feet in a mile to the Falls, including a harrowing bit of iffy footing just before you reach the base.

Then you go back the way you came. A side trip along the Rocky Ridge Trail adds about a mile each way, but you avoid a really steep patch of trail and get some great scenery.

So enough gabbing, let’s look at some pictures:

This is Stromer Spring, on the way to the Rocky Ridge Trail. There are gallons of fresh mountain springwater flowing out of the tap. (I took a taste; it was delish.)

The first several miles looked out over a bunch of this. We did get sunshine later, fortunately.

Water gushes at Williams Gulch.

Now, let me introduce Keith, with whom I hiked off and on most of the day. He was at Lichen Bark when I arrived and we headed up the hill, chatting about work, life and stuff. Of course like everybody else on the planet he’s a much faster hiker going uphill, so we parted ways for most of the climb up the Big Burn, then hiked together to the falls. He’s a geocacher, and that’s a geocache log he’s writing in. That’s the falls behind him.

Murietta Falls in all their glory. I was standing here in ankle-deep water thinking my Neos Overboots were watertight, then all the sudden my feet felt the cool reality of a leak, which meant walking back with soggy feet. Live and learn, I guess.

I had no luck getting cool pictures of the falls — there’s just too much light here in the middle of the day to get those cool slow-shutter-speed time exposure shots that make the water all flow together; gotta be here real early or real late. Might be a good excuse for an overnighter at Stewart’s Camp.

After lunch, it was back up the hill.

Trees reflected in a puddle. I know, reflection shots are not that clever, but I liked how this one came out.

Wildlife sighting!

The blue sky started coming out on the way back down the Big Burn. Finally.

Got some cool clouds on the way back to Rocky Ridge.

And a few more…

And a few more.

One final thought on the falls: Even after four days of rain they are not spectacular. Many hikers feel let down after hiking all that way. My thinking is: this is an epic hike, one of the toughest in the region. The virtue of completing it is its own reward; the falls are eye candy. Hike for the hike, not the view of water running down a narrow cataract in the middle of nowhere.

A couple Murietta Falls links:

East Bay Parks’ Del Valle Regional Park page

Kevin Gong’s Murietta hike.

View Larger Map

My days off are Sunday-Monday these days, which means I get a trails-to-myself day at least once a week if I want it.

Today strikes me as perfect one to check out Murietta Falls on the Ohlone Trail: a day with no rain in the forecast coming right after a major storm system has just blown through. The falls run only after major rainfall — and this year the ground was so dry after last year’s dry winter that most of the previous rains got soaked up by thirsty earth. But by now the run-off ought to be pretty strong, and the hills pretty green, and the lingering clouds over the hills creating photogenic scenes left and right.

Of course it’s 12 miles of hell out and back to get there, but some things simply must be done.

Pix & blather tonight.

So I’m on my way to Murietta Falls, trudging up a section of the Ohlone Wilderness Trail popularly known as The Big Burn; possibly so titled because of a fiery regeneration of the plant life years ago, but certainly because it’s 1,400 feet of climb in less than two miles, coming on top of the 1,800 feet of climb in two miles required to get this far. Your legs, they burn here.

It’s the prettiest part of the trail — tree-lined, full of dense vegetation that breaks to offer expansive views of the surrounding ridges. A delightful place to be if, say, dropped in by a helicopter. The scenery is just compensation for the grind.

So anyway, there I am, huffing it up the hill, when behind me I hear this Harrump-umph-Harump-umph — the oddest grunt imaginable in staccato couplets. I turn and see a blue blur and for a second I get a cold shiver of fear down the spine. "Bear!" I thought for the first nanosecond. "Sasquatch!" I thought next. Finally my eyes and my brain reached agreement that the form coming up the trail and the accompanying double-grunts belonged to a woman running out here, with her running partner right on her tail. The terrible sound was her labored breathing. She smiled as she passed, oblivious to the fact that I had just mistaken her for scary beast of the forest.

They passed me again several hours later on the way back to the car, and were just finishing up their cool-down/stretches when I got to the parking lot. Turns out they are ultramarathoners in training for a 100-mile race. They had just run 20 miles in six hours and were disappointed that the mud on the trails slowed their pace. They’re happier with four-hour times.

I walked a little bit less than half as far (12 miles) in 7 hours and was happy to make it back to the car before they closed the gates at Del Valle Regional Park at sunset. One thing about hiking, you meet all kinds. These were the second pair of ultramarathoners I’ve met on trails in the Bay Area. It sounds insane to think of jogging for a hundred miles, but almost anything can seem insane to the person not doing it.

Yeah, I took pictures, though not of the mega-joggers. I think they’d have paid me not to take their picture if the transaction could’ve taken place without forcing them to break stride.

I left my camera stowed until I got to the falls; this is the lowest section. Murietta Falls is the highest waterfall in the Bay Area at 3,000 feet. A tiny stream, barely a foot wide, pours down from the nearby ridges and cascades over a cliff for about a hundred feet. The falls are purely temporary — they happen only when there’s been enough rain to get a flow going in that little streambed. It trickles down through an impressive pair of rock formations on each side.

There’s a rather treacherous path down to the base of the falls; this is the steam continuing down the hillside beyond the falls.

Rocks jut up from the hillside on the trail back up from the base of the falls.

It’s just a trickle here as the stream that becomes the falls crosses the trail.

The elegant curve of a ridge line caught my eye on the way back from the falls.

This pond is about five miles from the parking lot. Once you’re here, you’re almost to the falls.

One little steep bit of trail goes to the top of the ridge, then it’s all downhill for the next couple miles

Yes, there has to be a dead tree.

Clouds, trees, patches of blue sky. These are all I require in my viewfinder.

Clouds encased the hills on the way back. This little gate is about halfway down the Big Burn.

It’s green as all get-out at the bottom of the Burn. From here there’s one more 500-foot climb, then it’s all downhill back to the parking lot.

The bits of blue sky in the previous pictures were the exception. Much of my day looked like this.

I’ve gotten rained on the past two times I’ve gone up the Ohlone Trail from Del Valle Park. I’ve endured the calf-burning climbs and toe-crushing descents, experienced undiscovered flavors of exhaustion each time. Is the scenic splendor worth the effort? Sure, but I can drive my car to the edge of the continent for scenic splendor.

Doubts about my strength and endurance kept me away from this trail for months. My first hike to the falls was 19 kinds of brutal, but I made it back in one piece. It’s funny how this works: Once I know I can, I realize I must.

I’m sore, tired and reeking with self-regard, having finished one of the most brutal hikes in the Bay Area today. It’s six and a quarter miles into the heights of the Ohlone Wilderness to a weak excuse for a creek that flows over a rock formation at elevation 2900 to create Murietta Falls, the highest waterfall in the Bay Area.

Most of the time there’s no water at the falls — the little stream that feeds it is no more than a couple feet wide, and it gets a good flow going only after several days of rain. It rained every day last week and another storm was on the way today — the forecast predicted an 80 percent chance of rain. I was going to hike with Mike and Kathy but they called their hike off, so I set off on my own to Lake Del Valle in Livermore, which is about 40 road miles from where we live. It didn’t rain a drop in seven hours on the trail.

The eastern end of the Ohlone Wilderness Trail — which snakes 28 miles south and west, ending on the far side of Mission Peak — begins about a mile up the trail from this sign. You have to pay $2 for a permit and a map (available at the Lake Del Valle Park entrance), plus $6 to park. Well, it’s cheaper than a movie ticket.

The out-and-back trek to Murietta Falls totals about 12.5 miles with over 4,000 feet of elevation gain. This is about the last flat patch of ground between here and the falls.

This is the official entrance to the Ohlone Wilderness. Hikers sign their names on the notepad, logging into and out of the Wilderness so the rangers will have an idea of who’s out there. I was the first one to sign today’s register, but there were about a dozen fresh names on the list when I returned.

This is about two miles up the trail. I’m already nearly 2,000 feet up.

This is probably the muddiest patch of trail I encountered. Most of the trails were fine, except for being so damn steep.

About two miles up, having just climbed over a thousand feet in less than a mile. And this was one of the comparatively easy climbs. See how that trail’s going down over the ridge? Well, it drops about 600 feet and ends up at a place called Williams Gulch. On the way down I started hearing this roar that couldn’t be the wind — it sounded too much like flowing water.

Rainwater roars down the gulch. Not quite a waterfall, but scenic enough for my simple tastes.

I crossed about here — at first I was thinking of turning back; it was almost 11 a.m. and I knew it’d be a couple hours back to the car. Then I got to the other side and lost all confidence that I could get back across the stream without landing in the water. But about that time two hikers came along who told me they were going to the falls. Unlike me, they had a rough idea of where they were going (I wasn’t exactly sure I was on the right trail here), so I made a snap decision to tag along with them.

Just up from here stands a section of trail called The Big Burn — so titled because that’s what your legs start doing after the first 100 yards. The trail climbs from 1800 feet to over 3400 in about two miles, a relentless slog that would tempt anyone with a modicum of sanity to turn back.

Here are Tony and Suzanne, who met me at the Gulch. We’re pausing to take in the scenery and I’m thinking "heck, this trail ain’t so bad." That feeling lasted for about the next 30 feet up the trail, where the ruinous uphill slog continued.

Suzanne checks out a plaque imbedded in the side of this rock, named for somebody named Schlieper. Tony assures me the trail flattens out about here, but it’s been four years since the last time he came this way. Somehow another 400 feet of hill grew since the last time he was here.

Eventually, though, we did get to the top of the ridge and started working our way down to the falls. All along the way I’m thinking Christ, I have to come back UP all these hills. We see a little stream running through a rock formation and we know we’re almost there. Only one problem: we have to climb down this hillside that would motivate a mountain goat to upgrade his life insurance. Tony picks his way down this rocky path and as I follow him I can’t help wondering how in the hell I’m ever going to make it back up this patch of trail.

Tony at the base of the falls. As waterfalls go this one is a bit underwhelming (and, mind you, it’s a raging torrent today — hikers consider themselves fortunate to find a trickle up here because the stream dries up so quickly).

As we break for lunch, another hiker shows up over there at the left. I chatted with him for a couple minutes on the way back down… he said he’d been up here four times and this was the first time he’d seen water in the falls.

I abandoned shame on the climb back up out of this little valley. I was going on all fours when necessary, grabbing rocks, trees, whatever, anything to save a little stress on my legs, which were going to have to propel me seven miles back to the car.

Tony and Suzanne near the highest point on the trail. It’s mostly downhill from here, with one mildly steep patch on the way back up out of the gulch.

Another Totally Cool Tree of California for my collection. Somebody call a tree surgeon, this one’s got tumors the size of Toledo.

Wildflowers bloom; spring can’t be far away. It’s almost 2:30 and there’s a lot of trail ahead of me … I wasn’t sure how long it’d take to get back to the car but I wanted it to be before sunset, when the Del Valle park closes. Tony and Suzanne slowed down a bit to save the strain on their feet and knees but I was feeling fine as long as the trail was going down. I took off without even saying goodbye, which caused nagging guilt all the way back. If I see one or the other of you two again, I owe you a beer.

In retrospect I can’t believe my good fortune:

• Dry weather prevailing despite a rainy forecast
• Kindly hikers coming along at precisely the right moment to help me make up my mind to go the whole way
• Making it all the way without so much as a cramp; no mishaps or even mild scares.
• Fulfilling my goal of making one of the area’s toughest hikes this spring.
• Seeing unusually high water flow at the falls.

On the way back from the falls we passed a couple hikers who had just finished the grueling Big Burn. One asked, "are they worth it?" We all said "you betcha" but I knew it was a bit of a fib — the falls are not especially impressive. But the trip getting there, it’s Mastercard material. You know, priceless.