Point Reyes National Seashore: A Great First-Time Backpacking Trip

Get started with a weekend get-away.

At a Glance

~20 miles over 4 days • Sea level • Year-round season • Running water, toilets, and food lockers

Reserve through recreation.gov up to three months ahead. Weekends fill fast. No fires, ever.

Full planning details at the end of this post.

Why Point Reyes Is a Great First-Time Backpacking Trip

The Point Reyes National Seashore is a great first-time backpack trip for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the campsites have amenities! It’s rare in the backcountry to find running water and a toilet, but all the campgrounds in the Point Reyes National Seashore have them. They‘ve also got food lockers at each developed campsite and most include a picnic tables. You feel like you are far away in the wilderness after hiking a few miles, but you are greeted like a welcome guest with extra comforts and conveniences!

Backpacking with Friends

Hiking with friends is also lots of fun and this is an easy overnight backpacking trail I would go back and do again and again to introduce other people to the amazing location. When you backpack with other people choose good company and you’ll have lots of interesting conversation. In addition, you can share all the great gear you’ve discovered and they haven’t or hear other people’s latest adventures that you missed (there is a little bragging that sometimes goes along the trail!). If the trail gets hard, talking through it can make the distance seem shorter. And people notice different things, so my experience backpacking with others is often really enhanced by seeing or hearing or smelling what they notice.

The Ecosystems You Hike Through

Sculpture Beach in Point Reyes.

One other thing about this trip that was so incredibly special to a Southern Californian who basically lives in a desert was water—and it wasn’t just the spigots in the campgrounds! The ocean is ever-present either near the trail or campground and you can hear the rush of the waves. Some trails had lots of coastal scrub which are low craggy bushes and few trees, but there were also other trails where the ferns covered the ground and moss hung from the trees in almost fairyland ways. For such a short trip (total of about 20 miles, including our day hike), there are a number of ecosystems you hike through making it a varied and appealing adventure. It is a trip we all still talk about!

How to Get To Point Reyes National Seashore

If you’re flying to San Francisco International Airport or Oakland Airport both have pretty easy access to the California coast. My friends drove from Southern California and stayed overnight next to Oakland Airport so they could pick me up when I arrived by air the next morning. My work schedule meant that I couldn’t leave until the day we started hiking and this arrangement worked best. Then we all drove together that morning to the Point Reyes Visitor Center to pick up our permit. Many permits are now available online to print out the week before you head out on your adventure, so always check first. If you’re able to print your permit before you go, head to the Visitor Center to pick up a t-shirt instead.

There are a number of entry points to the Point Reyes National Seashore, so depending on your backpacking plans (are you hiking a loop trail or end-to-end?) and where you have site reservations (get your site at recreation.gov), you can plan out multiple options. We entered at Sky Trailhead because it was only 1.3 miles into the Sky Campground from the trailhead. This made entering mid-afternoon possible. But it also made it a really accessible campsite so there were lots of families with kids. Love kids, but it was a little noisier than I had expected. Fortunately, the sites are laid out with plenty of room in between and low-lying shrubs give you some privacy. And the view was amazing!

Our Point Reyes Backpacking Loop

Alamere Falls in Point Reyes.

We did a loop starting at Sky Campground to Coast Campground (4.4 miles), and the next day to Wildcat Campground via the Coast Trail (4.1 miles), returning to the Sky Trailhead (6.2 miles) before driving back into San Francisco where I caught a rideshare to the airport (my friends were extending another few days). Wildcat has some of the more Instagrammable campsites in the Point Reyes area. While we didn’t get reservations for Spot 7 (the famous one!), the view from the whole area is fantastic.

Hiking to Alamere Falls

We took an extra day at Wildcat so we could explore Alamere Falls—definitely worth a side trip. Check out the trail map put together by the National Park Services to help you plan your route here. You can print it out and bring it with you, too.

Plan Your Own Point Reyes Backpacking Trip

Where	Point Reyes National Seashore, Marin County, about an hour and a half north of San Francisco, California.
Distance	About 20 miles over our loop, including the day hike to the falls.
Time	Three nights, four days. A single overnight works just as well and you have north and south access to campgrounds.
Season	Year round. Fog is common in summer and in winter it can rain.
Terrain	Packed dirt trail at sea level or a few hundred feet up on the bluffs. Descents from the bluff to beach and back up are required if you do a loop like we did, so it is not a flat trail. Some exposed terrain, some tree covered in the shade.
Permit	Reserve through recreation.gov, three months in advance (7am Pacific since the sites go quickly). Some sites release on a 14-day window instead.
Water	Potable water at all campgrounds. This is rare on backpacking trails, which is one of the things that makes this trip so approachable.
Food Storage	Steel food lockers located at each developed site. No bear canister is needed.
Camping	Four hike-in campgrounds: Sky, Coast, Glen and Wildcat. Toilets, running water, food lockers, and picnic tables at each. No fires allowed. Gas stoves only.
Getting There	Fly into SFO or Oakland and rent a car. Or drive if you’re in California. Multiple trailheads let you build a variety of loops or a point-to-point (but you’ll need two cars if you hike one end to the other.
Watch For	Ticks and poison oak in brush on bluffs. Fog drops visibility and temps. We took the Coast Trail route to Alamere Falls but there is a scramble if you go down to the beach. Be aware of tides in this section.
Good For	A first backpacking trip and a good one to do with friends.
Still on My List	Glen Camp. And campsite Spot 7 at Wildcat, considered to be the most Instagrammable view!
Afterward	If you didn’t get a t-shirt on your way in, stop by the Bear Valley Visitor Center and find a souvenir.

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Lea Appleton, PCC, NBC-HWC, is a Wayfinding Guide whose outdoor job is leading Wayfinding Days, Labyrinth Walks, and Team-Building Experiences and whose indoor job is coaching, writing, and speaking. She works with people who sense the path calling—and are learning to trust that it is worth following. Learn more at www.wildwayfinding.com

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