7 min
Overview
Murietta Falls, a 100-foot tall threadlike waterfall, skips down a corrugated rock wall into into a peaceful gulch with plentiful rocks for picnicking. The reward of this hike, besides the waterfall, is ambling through the sunny grasslands, oak woodlands, and riparian corridors of the Ohlone Regional Wilderness. It is really more like a quest: a test of endurance and stealth timing. Some hikers arrive disappointed to find a lackluster trickle or worse, bare rock. A good strategy is to wait for several days of stormy rains and then give it a go. By late spring, the window typically closes. Murietta Falls lies within the Ohlone Regional Wilderness, a 9,737-acre park only accessible by hikers or horseback riders. The East Bay Regional Park District manages the park and administers the camping permits for the 28-mile Ohlone Regional Wilderness Trail. That trail, which you follow for the majority of the hike to Murietta Falls, extends west to east beginning at the Stanford Avenue trailhead in Mission Peak Regional Preserve, continuing through Sunol Regional Wilderness and Ohlone Regional Wilderness, and finishing at Lake Del Valle in Del Valle Regional Park. As you hike southwest towards Murietta Falls from Del Valle Regional Park, you will climb two major ridges—Rocky Ridge and Rowell Ridge—that run nearly perpendicular to the trail. The hike’s 4,500-foot cumulative elevation gain takes into account every hill you climb throughout the hike. The alternative measure is net gain, which measures the difference between the highest point on the trail and the lowest point. Trails are well signed throughout the hike, with the exception of the final spur for Murietta Falls. Signposts with red discs mark the Ohlone Regional Wilderness Trail for the first 5.3 miles. After that, you leave Ohlone Regional Wilderness Trail behind and hike just under a mile to Murietta Falls. A word of caution: your hike through the Ohlone Regional Wilderness will likely create some serious stoke for completing the entire 28-mile Ohlone Regiona
Trail Stats
20.3 km
1371 m
1039 m
223 m
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