Wonder of Wonders, Pinnacle of Pinnacles

Pinnacles National Park is located in the Gavilans, but it attracts crowds like nowhere else in the region. Unlike other national parks, whose unique sights can often be viewed from the parking lot or pullout, Pinnacles’ parking lots offer only restrooms and a trailhead information sign. In the distance you can see some jagged rocky minarets of pinkish-gray cooled lava.  Big whoop. But once you climb up into the High Peaks on narrow paths and stairs built in the 1930’s by the WPA,  you become part of the Pinnacles and their 23 million year history. 

On the High Peaks Trail, we met a couple of young women from Kentucky and rested together. Their ambition was to hike every national park in the Lower Forty-Eight. When one told me they’d driven from near SFO that morning, they aroused my fervent admiration. I don’t have a so-called bucket list. I just hope the last years of my life will be as good as the earlier ones.

There’s lots to appreciate about Pinnacles in Winter and Spring. Condors are elusive but vultures omnipresent. I love the seep gardens and fascinating combinations of rock and plant that form in the crevice creeklets. Each small creeklet hosts such a variety of mosses, creepers, and shrubs. Pinnacles seems to have its own weather and rainclouds blow in and through. I love how the sky changes. There is worthy scenery in every direction. And of course tree shapes and rock formations spark the imagination. 

Well-graded and signed trails criss-cross the main minarets of High Peaks so several enticing day hike loops can be completed at our leisurely two mile an hour pace. We see the most hikers looping from East Pinnacles’ Bear Gulch Parking Lot up to High Peaks and down Condor Gulch. But my favorite hike is an 8.6 mile loop, up to High Peaks and back along Chalone Creek, with an optional scoot through Balconies Cave. We’ve hiked it both from the west, up Juniper Canyon, and from the east, along Sycamore Trail, Bench Trail, and then up Blue Oak Trail. This is Blue Oak:

If you’re short on time, just hike to the reservoir through Bear Gulch Cave, featuring a hundred or so wet slippery stairs and banisters. The only trail I can’t recommend is the North Wilderness Trail, although if you’re looking for solitude you will find it there. The North Wilderness Trail is not well-traveled and even hard to find in places, where we asked ourselves, “is that trail or just dried-out creek bed?”  

Just before the final mile to Chaparral Parking and Trailhead Joulie, we hiked through a dense cloud of mosquitos, looking for the east entrance to Balconies Cave. JG was in the lead, using his hiking stick to bushwhack through poison oak, while I creek-walked, thanks to using two hiking sticks. I found the entrance and called him back. We both retreated away from the mosquito cloud and I rubbed his exposed arms with a packet of Tecnu I carried for just such emergencies. Of course we were both wearing Permethrin-treated garments and Picaridin so we escaped the typical hiking threats unscathed. Smugness alert: It’s wonderful to gear our way out of difficulty. This is the narrow trail leading out of Balconies Cave toward the west.

The last mile was just as good as the first, just as I’d like my life to be. Bonus points: I carried out a soiled diaper someone had abandoned behind a rock. Then we sauntered back to the trailhead for an easy drive home.