Woodpecker Trail - 0.75 Miles Round-Trip

The Woodpecker Trail is a short nature loop through open pasture and Douglas fir forests adjacent to the Bear Valley Visitor Center of Point Reyes National Seashore. Mild grades and interpretive signs make this an ideal choice for families and newcomers to the Park.

Trail Map | Photo Gallery

Visitors will enjoy insight to this widespread forest community, and a chance to see deer, fox, coyote, woodpeckers and raptors. The trail begins just inside the Bear Valley Trailhead gate and leads west. The following description travels clockwise on the loop:

The Woodpecker Trail rises through a rolling meadow into a thick forest, where it narrows by a small creek. It gradually bends north through an archetypal Doug-fir and mixed evergreen forest to its highpoint (.35 miles : 287'), skirting the edge of open pasture to the Morgan Trail (.55 miles : 170'). Follows signs right back toward the Bear Valley Trailhead to complete the loop (.75 miles).

Extend your hike by branching off on the Morgan Trail, which continues .4 miles to Kule Loklo - a reconstructed Coast Miwok village - and 1.8 miles to Olema Marsh.

Forest Highlights:

The California Buckeye is a deciduous member of this predominantly evergreen forest. The buckeye produces bunches of white to pale pink flowers May through June, but may lose its leaves as early as mid summer. Although its flowers are toxic to bees and generally inedible, early inhabitants used the buckeye's unripe seeds to stupefy fish. Leaves were made into medicinal teas, and the wood was ideal for making a fire drill.

California Bay - also known as the California Laurel - is in the same plant family as avocados, and cinnamon. Sparse leaves sprout haphazardly off its branches and the trunk, always competing for light, often bends to one side. Because they prefer moist soil, California bay is only found on trails on the east side of Inverness Ridge.

The Coast Live Oak is named for its perennial leaves, in contrast to seasonal deciduous oak, which drop seasonally. Coast Live Oak leaves are dark green on top and white and hairy underneath. No other oak in California has leaves that curve backwards at its tip. Like all oaks, coast live oak drop acorns in the fall. Coast Miwok boiled acorns and pounded them into meal. Scrub jays and California ground squirrels help the acorns out by burying them in winter caches, essentially planting the acorns in the ground.

Douglas fir may stand over 200' tall and live for hundreds of years. They're comparably sized to Redwoods, but distinguished by their many lower limbs and draping mosses. The Douglas is not a true fir, but tends to resemble one (its scientific name translates to false hemlock). The Douglas fir pine cone holds 20 to 50 seeds, which will expand and float to the ground in early fall.