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| The Cascade Waterfall |
Date: January 10, 2025
Place: Anthony Chabot Regional Park, Oakland, California
Coordinates: 37.753850, -122.118217
Length: 4 miles
Level: mildly moderate
The January hike planned for the 4-H hiking group that I lead was planned for the Goldenrod/Cascade loop trail in Anthony Chabot Regional Park. It is a lovely trail that I hiked many times before, and I even wrote about way back when I just started this blog. At that time I hiked this loop as part of a longer hike starting and ending at the Lake Chabot Marina. It amounted to 9 miles altogether, and I did not intend to take the 4-H group of children on such a long trail. The loop on its own is only 4 miles long - a convenient half a day's hike. Since it had been a few years since the last time I hiked this trail, I went on a prep hike prior to taking the group, and I invited my elder chika to come along.
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| Our hike as captured by my GPS |
So on a bright, sunny Friday we parked at the Clyde Woolridge staging and started south on Goldenrod Trail, which starts as a dirt road that was also the line between the city and the park.
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| Goldenrod Trail |
Past a few houses and a horse range, the city side of the Goldenrod Trail is a large golf course. This area is also the highest of this loop trail, meaning the golf balls that are hit outside of the golf course end up rolling down hill. We saw a golf ball on the trail and picked it up.
On the east side of the trail the trees closed in, tall eucalyptus groves at first, but a bit lower down the trail they were replaced by the usual east bay mix of oaks and laurel.
We were descending down the trail, on a mild slope at first. We stopped briefly when Lake Chabot came into view. My chika asked if we'll be going all the way down there and I confirmed that indeed, we were. She groaned a bit, no doubt thinking abut the ascension that would follow, and I quipped about the high power lines that interfered with the view.
After the view point the trail became pretty steep. It also distanced from the city area, curving east toward the lake. The trees now shaded nearly the entire path and the forest flor was more moist with a thick, green lower vegetation. We started seeing mushrooms, both pretty and interesting.
We were quite far from the golf course now, but found a couple more golf balls. I pocketed them as well - they didn't belong in the forest.
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| Goldenrod Trail |
The next time we had a nice view of Lake Chabot we also stopped for a short break. There were no power lines obstructing the view from here and I could see the arrowheads that indicated the movement of waterfowl on the lake's surface, even if I couldn't discern the birds themselves from that distance.
Just before turning left on the next trail junction we saw another golf ball. It was a fairly new-looking one, which meant it had come a pretty long way in a pretty short time. This time I remembered taking a photo of the ball before removing it from nature.
All that time my chika was looking for birds but hasn't seen many that she considered worthy of her attention. Eventually she did find a few that were both interesting to her and also in clear enough view for photographing.
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| Brown Creeper |
Another mushroom attracted my attention - it was brown and well camouflaged among the dry leaves but it was whole and pretty.
We reached the lake shore and doubled back to the north on Bass Cove Trail, along the shoreline. This was the north most end of Lake Chabot - a human made water reservoir, one of the earliest built in the East Bay. The trail was about 12 ft above the lake, and there was no access to the water.
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| Bass Cove Trail |
I found it funny that at the lake shore there was much less view of the lake than from higher up the trail.
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| Lake chabot |
We scanned the water surface for birds but all we could see were coots and a few mallards that were resting near the opposite shore.
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| American Coot |
It didn't take us long to reach the northern end of Lake Chabot. The end was clogged with tall wetland vegetation. A few more coots were swimming between the clamps of tule and horsetails.
Past the open water there was a patch of very still water that was covered with duckweed - a small higher aquatic plant. It was so dense that it was very tempting to walk on, like a carpet.
Past the lake the trail continued a bit more inland, following the lower part of Grass Valley Creek. There were plenty of rotting logs and branches strewn beside the trail and many of them bloomed with lovely-looking mushrooms.
The lower part of Grass Valley Creek is probably my favorite part of this loop trail. The path, which starts as a continuation of Bass Cove Trail but changes to Columbine Trail past the turn to the path that goes around the lake, is narrow, and deeply shaded by the arching boughs of laurel trees. I find the laurel fragrance that fills the air and the nostrils very pleasing. The sense of this section of the trail is very wild.
The trail goes right by the creek and crosses it a few times. It was easy enough to cross it on the day of our hike - there hasn't been much rain yet this season, and the creek was low. I have hiked there though when the creek was running high and it was impossible to cross it without wading in the water.
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| Grass Valley Creek |
My chika pointed out to me a jawbone on the mat of dry leaves. It looked like the jawbone of a deer. There were no other bones of that deer around and it could have been carried there from up the creek, just like the golf balls.
We didn't see any live deer that day, but interesting wildlife doesn't always come in large packaging - a funny looking water-walking insect marched gracefully on the calm surface of the creek. The flow was very slow and hardly noticeable - if not for the lazily moving vegetation particles one could have mistaken this to be standing water.
We found a few more cute mushrooms on the way. When it is off season for the wildflowers, the mushrooms take the colorful reproduction shift.
After crossing the creek back and forth a few times the trail started rising on the hill side, leaving the water flowing down below a deep gulch. There were many tree species growing along the trail and the slope of the gulch, including groves of thin eucalyptus.
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| Columbine Trail |
Below the eucalyptus on the trail were a few dark-eyed junco birds that looked for something to eat. The eucalyptus is an invasive species in California but it had already become an important part in the local habitats. One of the most known beneficiaries of the eucalyptus are the monarch butterflies. I looked, but couldn't see any on the trees we were passing under.
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| Dark-eyed Junco |
The first part of the ascend, on Columbine Trail, was fairly steep but short. The Columbine Trail continued steeply up to meet the Goldenrod Trail about where the golf course was, and we continued ahead on the Cascade Trail, which was now almost flat and much easier to walk.
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| Cascade Trail |
The Cascade Trail curved along the contours of the hill, high above the gulch's floor where the creek was flowing. In places where the trail was out of the trees we got a nice view of the opposite hillside. Once again those high power lines interfered with the pristine forest view.
One of the trees that I haven't seen many of earlier on the hike was the madrone tree. Poking its canopy above the other vegetation, it's smooth, reddish back glistened in the sunshine.
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| Pacific Madrone, Arbutus menziesii |
I came upon a crack in the rock to my left, a crack formed by a widening oak root. I instantly recognized that crack: that crack has caught my attention on my first hike of this trail, and when I took a closer look I saw a garter snake curled below the root. There was no snake there now. Not that I expected to see any out in January.
Up the trail there is a small waterfall. Most of the year the creek (and waterfall) are dry, but now I was hoping to see it flow. I was happy to see that it was flowing, even if a trickle.
It was a short distance from the waterfall to the end of the Cascade Trail. We walked quickly now, both of us eager to finish the hike and have lunch. I paused briefly to admire the pretty white berries of the snowberry bush.
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| Common Snowberry, Symphoricarpos albus |
At the next trail junction we turned left and ascended the short and steep dirt road that led back up to the staging area where we parked. On the way up I admired the "cross-legged" oak tree on the side of the trail.
Just before reaching the top and closing the loop hike was a toyon bush, laden with beautiful red berries. It was a very nice sight to finish our hike with.
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| Toyon, Heteromeles arbutifolia |
My chika and I had collected about four golf balls on this hike. Granted - we didn't look for them, only picked up those that were directly on the trail. On the following day however, the 4-H kids were much more industrious in finding and removing the stray golf balls. We collected nearly thirty balls, some were very old and some looked brand new. We found them all along the trail between the golf course and the lake, and half way up the Columbine Trail. We saw many more golf balls that we couldn't reach so we had to leave where they were. I can only imagine how many of these plastic golf balls are resting at the bottom of Lake Chabot.
