Bear Valley to Five Brooks --- A Hike With Only One "Fault"

A perfect trail (not too flat, not too well traveled, not too steep). Perfect weather (not too hot, not too cold, not too much sun, not too cloudy, and no rain). Perfect companions (although only about half of our regular Tuesday group, plus Stan from the Monday "Meanderers", made this hike). Our slightly uphill trek from Bear Valley to Five Brooks in the Point Reyes National Seashore was a perfectly delightful outing.

We started off with a short stroll to the pond at Five Brooks. The Wood Ducks wouldn't show, but we did spot some "UFDs" (Unidentified Floating Ducks) during our "circumnavigation" of this small "lake". As we had on the Rock Springs hike two weeks earlier, we met up with another contingent of regular Tuesday "geezer" hikers --- this group hailed from Inverness and we wished each other a good day on the trail as we parted company.

Back at the parking lot, we ran into a large contingent of teenagers who had spilled out of several tour buses and were awaiting assignment to clean up trails in this section of the park. We left them to their chores and hopped back into our cars to shuttle north up Highway 1 past Olema to park headquarters where our hike southward back to Five Brooks would begin.

Our hike's route through the earthquake "rift zone" paralleled the San Andreas Fault which splits the Olema Valley roughly down its middle. Luckily for us, the National Weather Service forecast of cool temperatures (in the high 50's) proved erroneous and the fog failed to push over the ridge of coastal hills and into the valley. As we started out from near the park's visitor center in Bear Valley, the overcast of the past few days was replaced by sunny skies dotted with puffy white cumulus clouds signaling warming into the mid-60's --- "Goldilocks Hiking Weather."

The first section of our hike through the area adjacent to Bear Valley took us through a large, grassy meadow bounded to the north by a long line of Cypress trees marking the entrance to the 2,000 acre parcel owned by the Vedanta Society of Northern California. We encountered a small herd of Black Angus cattle loafing under a tree as we began our trek across this Hindu-based organization's land putting us squarely on the horns of a dilemma: Were these "Sacred Cows" whose lives would be lived out to a "natural" end in the pasture, or were they being raised to provide protein-on-the-hoof for the omnivores in our group? A loading chute on the far side of the meadow ominously implied that a trip to the slaughter house was in their future. We took a short break here while Wendy related the history of the Society and its ownership of this property within the Point Reyes National Seashore boundaries.

From that point on the trail climbed upward in occasionally steep spurts, taking us from shady forests into open meadows and back again. This alternating habitat created opportunities to hear or see many birds, including flycatchers, a winter wren, hawks and Turkey Vultures, as well as baby turkeys and quail. A little past mid-day we found an ideal picnic spot on a grassy slope with a view back to the forested ridgeline to the west.

About three hours into the hike we passed more Black Angus in a small meadow, then during a fairly precipitous decent to the valley floor just behind the historic Stewart Ranch we were treated to a cacophonous "serenade" by unseen cows whose bellowing voices conjured up visions of them being carved into rib-eye steaks without the benefit of sedation. A short time later we crossed a stream and entered the Stewart Horse Camp where we stopped for a bit while Wendy recounted the names of some of the pioneer families (including the Stewarts) that had settled this part of Marin County. (The Stewarts also ranched in Nicasio and are mentioned in Nicasio: The Historic Valley At The Center of Marin, a book recently published by and available through the Nicasio Historical Society.)

Less than half a mile later the trail brought us back to the pond at Five Brooks where we had started the day. Wendy made her "first ever" sighting of a Muskrat cruising across this pond. Damsel and dragonflies zipped back and forth along its perimeter. The tour buses were still in the parking lot, but we never saw the teenagers whose trail work apparently had taken them off in directions away from the path which we had followed. We ended the day with a 15-20 minute drive back to Bear Valley, retracing the route that had taken us ten times as long to hike.