The High Points of Point Reyes

Point Reyes National Seashore’s highest summit, 1,407-foot Mt. Wittenberg, offers sweeping vistas of the entire Point Reyes Peninsula: Tomales Bay, Olema Valley and Bolinas Ridge. On clear days, look for distant Mt. Diablo.

Surely the least used of the paths that begin from the seashore headquarters, Mt. Wittenberg Trail’s stiff ascent apparently scares off most hikers. No need to be scared, though it is a serious workout to walk Wittenberg.

Rewards for the ascent include the aforementioned views and Sky Camp, an excellent picnic spot. Once you’ve gained the summit, you can join Sky Trail along Inverness Ridge, then choose one of a couple of different trails to return to Bear Valley.

When hiking in the Bear Valley area, the awesome forces that shaped this land are evident. You can hike along the earthquake rift zone, tramp along creeks flowing through the peninsula’s fissures, and from the ridges look down at Olema Valley, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake’s epicenter.

Along with the earthquake-displaced land, the ocean is an overwhelming presence here. Point Reyes is bounded on three sides by more than 50 miles of bay and ocean frontage. The point, described as hammer-headed--or wing-shaped by the more poetic--literally and figuratively sticks out from California’s fairly straight coast north of San Francisco.

This hike tours part of the 24,200-acre Phillip Burton Wilderness, named for a late congressman, Phillip Burton, who was a longtime San Francisco representative in the 1960s and 1970s. Burton was a staunch wilderness advocate and accomplished environmental legislator who greatly helped increase the size and number of America’s wilderness areas.

Directions to trail head: Bear Valley Visitor Center is located just outside the town of Olema, 35 slow and curving miles north of San Francisco on California Highway 1. A quicker route is by U.S. 101, exiting on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, traveling through the town of Fairfax and over to Olema. A left turn on Bear Valley Road takes you to the visitor center and trail head.

The hike: Begin on Bear Valley Trail and in a quarter-mile reach a right-forking junction at a large bay tree with signed Mt. Wittenberg Trail. Bear right and begin your march toward Inverness Ridge.

With sword ferns pointing the way, the path climbs past a mixed forest of tanbark oak and Douglas fir. After gaining more than 1,000 feet in elevation, you reach the ridge crest and a junction. Join the rightward path for a climb to the top of Mt. Wittenberg. Otherwise, head left and in one-quarter mile, reach a four-way junction. For a somewhat mellow 1.5-mile descent back to Bear Valley, join east-trending Meadow Trail, which crosses a long meadow, then descends past bay trees and Douglas fir.

Sky Trail continues south a mile through a Douglas fir forest and past a variety of berry bushes to meet Old Pine Trail, another fairly easy way back to Bear Valley. This trail descends 1.9 miles through a long meadow and past a small grove of Bishop pine.

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Mt. Wittenberg Trail

WHERE: Point Reyes National Seashore.

DISTANCE: To Mt. Wittenberg summit is 3.4 miles round trip with 1,300-foot elevation gain; return via Old Pine Trail is 6.6 miles round trip; return via Baldy Trail is 8.6 miles round trip.

TERRAIN: Forested Inverness Ridge.

HIGHLIGHTS: Grand vistas from national seashore high point.

DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY: Fairly strenuous.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Point Reyes National Seashore, Point Reyes, CA 94956; tel. (415) 663-1092.