Waterfalls of Novato

Novato has three main publicly accessible waterfalls that I know about. (If I’m missing others, tell me in the comments!) All three are found on the lower slopes of Big Rock Ridge, the main topographical feature on our southern border. After all, there are two main ingredients to a waterfall: water and an elevation change. The season provides the first – all of these are cascading nicely now in late February. And Big Rock Ridge – which climbs to the second highest point in the county after Mount Tam – provides the second.

Much of Big Rock Ridge is rather lightly explored, even by locals. Public access is spread across five county open space preserves (not all connected together by trails), a parcel on the southern side belonging to the Marinwood Community Services District, and easements over private land. To take on the main, ridge-topping fire road requires some laborious climbing and offers few loop possibilities, while some minor trails exist only as isolated and disconnected bits and pieces tacked on to the edge of various neighborhoods. The second and third waterfalls below fall into this latter category. Another reason for their relative neglect: maybe you didn’t know there were a number of lovely waterfalls in this town. That we can remedy right now.

#1: Waterfall Trail at Indian Valley Open Space 

This is the most well-known of the three, existing in a well-used open space preserve with a healthy trail network. While it is a perfectly pleasant little fall and well worth pausing to admire on a walk around Indian Valley, it is in fact the smallest of the three waterfalls described here. There are lots of possibilities for loops of varying lengths among these wooded hills of modest elevation: take your time, look for varied thrushes in the dense patches of bays and live oaks, comb the canopy for kinglets and Townsend’s warblers, and then see if you can cap your route with the mellifluous sounds of water and rock.

Where: The Ken Harth Waterfall Trail as a whole follows along a nicely gurgling creek for much of its length. The largest (though still modest) waterfall is near the northern end of this trail, perhaps a quarter of a mile from the intersection from the main Indian Valley Fire Road, meaning you could reach the fall in a bit under a mile from either of the main preserve entrances: either entering the fire road from Indian Valley Road to the north or via the last College of Marin parking lot on the south, by the farm and sports fields. To understand this, see the trail map. 

#2: Buck Gulch Falls

At Ignacio Valley Open Space Preserve, also known as  “the waterfall at the end of Fairway”

Local neighborhood residents know this waterfall, tucked away on a small trail at the end of Fairway Drive in Ignacio, but many others don’t. (I see more people on the trail than cars at the trailhead, which generally speaking is a good thing. You should always make sure to explore your own backyard.) And it is well worth knowing, with the biggest crashing cascade of our local falls, with a perhaps 15 foot drop into a pool. You can walk right up to it to admire the falls from multiple angles, and a number of convenient boulders provide nice perches for prolonged basking in the sound of the cascade. As Tang dynasty hermit poet Cold Mountain said, in my personal amalgamation of the translations of Red Pine and Gary Snyder:

In my first thirty years of life
I roamed hundreds and thousands of miles.
Walked by rivers through deep green grass
Entered cities of boiling red dust.
Tried drugs, but couldn’t make Immortal;
Read books and wrote poems on history.
Today I’m back at Cold Mountain:
I’ll sleep by the creek and wash out my ears.

This is the best ear-washer in Novato.

(According to my Chinese poetry consultant, you’re actually supposed to stick your head in the water for a thorough ear washing, but even just listening for a good while seems to me to have some beneficial effects.)

There are actually three more upper falls above the main signed waterfall. You can still see traces of the use trails on which people used to scramble up to these higher levels, but a few years ago the H Ranch landowners put up big loud fences and “no trespassing” signs across these paths. As of February 2019, there appears to be another path that is not fenced off heading up another fork of the creek, away from the main falls. This fork has some pleasant gurgling, but no major falls, while the path such as it is quickly peters out. And they probably don’t want you going up there either, the killjoys. I’m not sure why all these signs are necessary – maybe someone tried to climb up there and cracked their skull open or something – but the unfortunate visual effect is rather off-putting.

And quite frankly I would be disgusted to the point of taking immediate vengeance if I was brought to a purportedly magical place one afternoon in late September and thereupon belted down to the pond, all by myself most likely, only to discover the word “pond” scrawled on a poxy piece of damp plywood right there beside it. Oh I’d be hopping. That sort of moronic busybodying happens with such galling regularity throughout childhood of course and it never ceases to be utterly vexing. One sets off to investigate you see, to develop the facility to really notice things so that, over time, and with enough practice, one becomes attuned to the earth’s embedded logos and can experience the enriching joy of moving about in deep and direct accordance with things. Yet invariably this vital process is abruptly thwarted by an idiotic overly of literal designations and inane alerts so that the whole terrain is obscured and inaccessible until eventually it is all quite formidable. As if the earth were a colossal and elaborate deathtrap. How will I ever make myself at home here if there are always these meddlesome scaremongering signs everywhere I go.

“The Big Day,” Pond, Claire-Louise Bennett

Moronic busybodying and meddlesome scaremongering – I concur. It’s a lovely waterfall, but its beauty is rather insulted first by the unnecessary and inelegant “Buck Gulch Falls” sign (if they had made a nice old wooden one, like the named trees in Sequoia’s Giant Forest, that would be one thing), but then much more so by the multiple big “private property beyond, no passage without permission” signs and fences. Come on people, must you really keep the waterfalls all to yourself?

Anyways, in addition to our biggest waterfall, the early part of the trail is also notable for hosting Novato’s best run of bigleaf maples. We have a few scattered trees in Indian Tree and Indian Valley Preserves, and probably some more in un-trailed canyons on Big Rock Ridge, but here the creek has a short stretch that is veritably lined with them. For much of the waterfall season, they are bare of leaves, but you can still identify them by the old maple leaves on the ground, by their pattern of oppositely arranged twigs, by lingering two-winged samaras (“helicopter”-style seed holders), and by their tallish vertical trunks with thinly striated gray bark. Visit in later spring for hopefully both water in the creek and maples leaves and flowers on the trees. Or in fall when the water are exhausted, but the maples leaves turn golden and fall in graceful pirouettes.

Where: The Buck Gulch Falls is accessed via a small disconnected slice of Ignacio Valley Open Space Preserve, one of several Big Rock Ridge preserves, but one with very limited trail connections to neighboring preserves (i.e. no connection here, but there are a few other trails that connect on other edges of the preserve). The trail then passes on an easement over private land owned by the H Ranch. Note that immediately after major rains, the first creek crossing can sometimes become impassable, in which case you can divert your waterfall-viewing plans to either of the other two falls described here, neither one too far away.

To reach the trailhead, travel to the end of Fairway Drive, off Ignacio Boulevard in southern Novato. 611 Fairway Drive is the neighboring house, if you want a GPS reference. For additional tromping in the neighborhood, feel free to explore the unsigned “Spyglass Trail,” which forks off to the right from the waterfall trail, and which follows another branch of the creek for a pleasant mile or so, or the other trailheads off Fairway which connect to the larger trail network of Big Rock Ridge.

#3: Pacheco Creek Falls

The least known and the least of a “destination,” due to its small size (the trail to the fall takes all of a five minute stroll), but really a perfectly nice waterfall. By the foot, it’s just about the equal of the final leg of the Buck Gulch fall, but it performs its drop as more of a cascade over a slightly sloping rock face rather than with the thunderous cymbal crash of an uninhibited through-the-air-into-a-pool free fall. And the trail, while short, is still quite lovely to visit in February and March, with buckeyes unclenching their palmate leaves, shooting stars shooting, and buttercups getting buttery along the gently gurgling creek.

Where: To get there, follow Alameda del Prado deep into the Pacheco Valle neighborhood, home to nicely avian street names like Puffin Court and Flicker Drive, eventually bearing right on Pacheco Creek Drive. Continue to the end, where there is room for a few cars to park around the circle by the signed entrance to the Pacheco Valle Open Space Preserve. 70 Pacheco Creek Drive is the house nearest the trailhead. This trail does not connect to the other Big Rock Ridge trails, but there are multiple other trailheads in the neighborhood that do.