The rare tidefall: a roughly 40 foot drop straight onto Wildcat Beach in the Point Reyes wilderness, fed by coastal rain and reached only by a long hike.
December through April
Big water window
in a typical year
Rain fed
What drives it
Alamere Creek
Climatology
Data on this page
Alamere Creek is ungauged
NPS Point Reyes
Managed by
their rules govern
Trail status, closures and safety rules belong to each falls' managing agency, named and linked on every page.
The season
What fills Alamere Falls, and when
Alamere Creek is pure coastal rain catchment with no snowpack behind it, so the falls follows the storm calendar: strongest in the winter and early spring rainy season and thin by the end of the dry California summer. After a soaking atmospheric river it fattens within days; after a dry spring it fades early.
Typical best flow: December through April
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What the agency itself says
Alamere Falls is a beautiful waterfall deep within the Phillip Burton Wilderness . The falls are a dramatic sight as water cascades over a ~40-foot-tall (~12 m) cliff onto the south end of Wildcat Beach.
Point Reyes National Seashore (National Park Service)Multnomah Falls in autumn: a Columbia Gorge falls that keeps respectable flow year round, and the standard against which most falls seasons get measured. “Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Multnomah Falls, fall color - 3” — Forest Service Pacific Northwest Region — Public domain
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Right now
Current flow at Alamere Falls
Rain-fed falls carry the color of their watershed: Blackwater Falls runs amber with tannin from spruce and hemlock bogs upstream, and its volume tracks the last month of Appalachian weather. “Blackwater Falls (15437499241)” by Benjamin Smith from United States, CC BY 2.0
Getting there
Access, in the agency's words and ours
The Park Service is emphatic that the shortcut social trail is not a maintained route; the sanctioned approach is a roughly 13 mile minimum round trip through the Phillip Burton Wilderness, and the site generates multiple search and rescue operations each year by the agency's own count.
Rain-fed falls run on the last month of weather wherever they are; this one is Looking Glass Falls in North Carolina. Alamere keeps the same checking-account hydrology on the Point Reyes coast. “Looking Glass Falls, North Carolina, April 2025” by Bill McMannis, CC BY 2.0
Common questions
Alamere Falls flow season FAQ
The reliable big-water window is December through April. Alamere Creek is pure coastal rain catchment with no snowpack behind it, so the falls follows the storm calendar: strongest in the winter and early spring rainy season and thin by the end of the dry California summer. After a soaking atmospheric river it fattens within days; after a dry spring it fades early.
Alamere Creek has no USGS gauge near the falls, so the seasonal pattern above is the flow guide for Alamere Falls, and Point Reyes National Seashore (National Park Service) is the source for current conditions on the ground.
It thins dramatically. As a rain-fed coastal creek with no snowmelt reserve, Alamere is at its best December through April and can be a modest trickle by late summer, though the setting on Wildcat Beach earns the walk in any month.
Point Reyes National Seashore (National Park Service). The Park Service is emphatic that the shortcut social trail is not a maintained route; the sanctioned approach is a roughly 13 mile minimum round trip through the Phillip Burton Wilderness, and the site generates multiple search and rescue operations each year by the agency's own count. Trail status, closures and safety rules are theirs, and their page is linked on this one; nothing here overrides what they publish.
In their own words: "The "Alamere Falls Trail" is NOT a maintained trail, and poses many hazards to off-trail hikers—crumbling and eroding cliffs , massive poison oak , ticks , and no cell phone service." That sentence is Point Reyes National Seashore (National Park Service)'s, quoted verbatim, and their page is the place to check before you go.
Yosemite Falls in May, running on snowmelt that will be gone by late summer. The National Park Service tells visitors the falls can be dry by August, which is why every falls page here starts from its watershed. “Tourists below Yosemite Falls (39832011431)” by Mike McBey, CC BY 2.0
The tallest waterfall in North America by the Park Service's measure, and the most famous seasonal one: 2,425 feet of snowmelt that thunders in May and is often gone by August.
The 620 foot fall at the gateway of Yosemite Valley: a thundering column in spring, a light swaying veil the rest of the year, and one of the few Yosemite falls that never quite quits.
The 317 foot Merced River step on the Mist Trail, wide as a curtain in June and narrowed to ribbons by late summer; the mist that names the trail is a spring-only drenching.
The 594 foot upper step of the Merced staircase above Vernal Fall, at its loudest in late May and June and visible from Glacier Point when the road is open.
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