Waterfall Loop at Big Basin – 11 miles (by foot)

I’ve been traveling a lot these days and was looking forward to having the long weekend at home. I’ve not enjoyed a lot of the close to home treasures so it was fun to hang out into my virtual backyard and see Big Basin. The last time I was there was about 5 years ago. The feature there is redwood trees. Tall redwood trees!

Saturday a bunch of us took a motorcycle ride through the park. That was fun, but you can only see so much at 20-55 miles per hour. Monday I went back to the park and did some hiking in the park. The plan was to do the Waterfall Loop. It’s an 11 mile loop with one easy half and one more challenging half. With the rain we’ve had, the waterfalls should be in good form. With it being overcast, the light for taking pictures would be even better. The dim light allowed for some fun long exposure shots.

We started on the Skyline to the Sea which runs from Castle Rock to Waddell Beach (31 miles). We only hiked a short part of it over to the Berry Creek Falls trail. Both trails had pretty minimal elevation change. It was about a 2 hour, mellow hike from the park headquarters to the falls. Once we got there we had a beautiful place to eat lunch:

The documentation for the hike noted that the hike was strenuous. We’d not felt like the hike was all that challenging. Maybe the distance that was making the hike strenuous. Once at Berry Creek Falls we switched over to the Sunset trail. Then things changed. We hiked up a steep face to another beautiful waterfall:

Then more ups, and downs, and trees to come to another nice waterfall:

After that last waterfall we had another 4 miles which was the long slog back to the parking lot. This section was the equivalent to the long freeway slog home. The trail went on but we were sensitized to the scenery and getting tired so we just hiked so the miles wore on. Having done the whole thing, I can say I felt a sense of accomplishment and really enjoyed the hike. We hiked the loop in the right direction too. The first half was a really nice warm up for the second half.