Last year during certain Sunday mornings, a taste of San Francisco hype culture started regularly appearing among the manzanita and needlegrass near the peak of Mount Tamalpais: people waiting in line after seeing something online. They hiked nearly 2 miles in pursuit of pancakes and queued on the trail for $13 plates. Nobody was more surprised by their idling than Alyssa Jorgensen.
The chair of the Pancake Breakfast Committee arrived at the West Point Inn for a volunteer shift in October to find a horde of people snaking around the historic hotel perched 1,781 feet above the nearby ocean. Social media posts from the time showed hikers marching like ants up Old Stage Road to take a bite and then post a pic of the latest Bay Area experiential trend.
Jorgensen told SFGATE she was stunned to see how the crowd had appeared 90 minutes before volunteers even started serving breakfast at 9 a.m. The kitchen tried to keep up, rapidly whisking dozens of gallons of just-add-water pancake batter.
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The $13 pancake breakfast for adults at the West Point Inn.
Eric Brooks/SFGATE
Looking toward San Francisco from the Mount Tamalpais summit, above the West Point Inn.
Tom Charoensinphon/Getty Images
The West Point Inn has hosted its Pancake Breakfast Fundraiser once a month from May to October for decades to support the 122-year-old inn. Traditionally, they’d welcome anywhere between 500 and 800 people a month, except on Mother’s Day, when they’d tally 1,000 pancake breakfasts served.
Over the past two summers, it’s been Mother’s Day on repeat as clips about the fundraiser spread on social media. “We’d quiz people about how they heard about us,” Jorgensen said. “It’s a different demographic: younger hikers from all over the Bay Area. They came in groups. They said they saw us on TikTok and Instagram.”
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Those busy mornings became such a routine — placing a strain not only on the volunteer program but on nearby trailheads — that organizers decided to adapt the fundraiser heading into this summer.
Instead of serving anyone who appears, West Point Inn is launching a reservation system for about 900 people max each month. And to help curb some of the intensity, the Sunday morning tradition is only going to occur for four months instead of six: May 10 (Mother’s Day), June 21 (Father’s Day), Aug. 9 and Sep. 13. No July or October breakfasts.
Crowds of hikers gather for pancakes at the West Point Inn in 2025.
Eric Brooks/SFGATE
By removing two months, Jorgensen said it gives volunteers a break. Also, October events were sometimes canceled because of red flag warnings — a particular concern this year due to the state’s sparse snowpack.
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Tickets are available through the inn’s website. For the first breakfast of the year, on Mother’s Day, they are slated to appear sometime mid-morning on Friday, April 3. “We wanted to keep Mother’s and Father’s Day,” Jorgensen said. “They’ve historically brought more guests and created more memories for people.”
Visitor impact on Mount Tamalpais State Park was mostly unnoticeable, until the breakfast started filling the parking lots at the Bootjack and Pantoll campgrounds nearby or along the edge roads in the park.
“It’s a fair amount of extra work for State Park employees,” Jorgensen said. “That didn’t seem right or fair, especially since it’s so removed from the Inn itself.”
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Breakfast at the West Point Inn started sometime in the 1970s and it’s become an important source of revenue. Jorgensen, who used to serve on the board for the inn and was once its president, said the fundraiser provides around 10-15% of the annual income. “It’s the blueberry on top,” she said. The inn covers the rest of its expenses through overnight stays and dues from its membership program, which has about 600 people.
Mountain bikers at the West Point Inn.
Colleen Proppe/flickr Editorial/Getty Images
Jorgensen said the inn is seeing strong occupation these days, a welcome change after setbacks during the pandemic. Toward the end of 2020, as hospitality cratered, the inn’s managers launched a fundraiser for $20,000 that kept the century-old property from closing.
As the restrictions from the pandemic began to fade, the record for most pancake breakfasts served was about 1,000 on a single Mother’s Day. Each ensuing summer, it became more and more popular, until 2024 when footage about the experience started overflowing online.
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There’s an unofficial fan page on Instagram for the inn with more than 1,300 followers (the Facebook page for the innkeepers has half as many) and one visitor called the breakfast a “bucket list” outing.
“It really is the experience and being there — standing in line was part of the experience. It’s mind blowing, I hate standing in line for things,” Jorgensen said. “Some call it the ‘viral pancake hike’ and we’re like, ‘Really? It’s just the West Point Inn.’”