Leslie and David's Wanderings: 11 October 2019 Pinnacles National Park

One of our goals of this stop is to visit Pinnacles National Park. The drive from the RV park was about an hour and a half. This is a fairly small National Park. It was a National Monument from 1908 to 2013, and was re-designated a NP in 2013. The main attraction of the park is a series of volcanic rock formations near the top of a mountain and a few resident California Condors. The visitor center was mostly store and had no exhibits and no movie. We collected our 54th Passport Stamp,and looked through the gift store. We then talked to the Rangers about possible hikes. After finding out we had 5-6 hours available, she laid out a loop trail that

would take us through the high Pinnacles and maximize our chances of seeing a Condor. Then we would return through a cave to the parking area. The first part of the loop was climbing up Condor Gulch Trail to the High Peaks Trail. The climb was arduous. The temperatures were in the high 80s and there was very little shade. The area reminded us a lot of Big Bend. When we got to the highest portions of the trail, we had to climb up and down steep rock cut ladders, which had a railing pipe anchored in the rock to hold on to. The steps were cut into the rock by the CCC 80 years earlier. They provided some excitement to the trudge. The Pinnacles Monoliths are volcanic rock which has been pushed vertical by the plate tectonics and the movement of the San Andres Fault just to the east of the park. When we got to the highest point, we saw our first California Condor. It was sitting on the top of one of the pinnacle rocks. It disappeared and then reappeared in the air. We spent a half hour watching two or three condors fly around above us before we pressed on. The climb down the rock ladders was a bit more dicey than going up them. We followed High Peaks Trail to Bear Gulch Cave Trail. We ran out of water as we started down, which given the heat, was not a good thing. We got to the start of the Bear Gulch Cave, which is formed by huge boulders which have fallen into the gulch forming a cave where a stream runs through. We made it about a hundred yards into the cave when we encountered an area where we would have needed to crawl to get through. We decided to skip the cave and took the Moses Spring trail instead. By the time we got back to the truck (6.9 miles, 1,693 feet of elevation gain, 2,580 Calories burned), we were exhausted and very dehydrated. Fortunately we had more water in the truck waiting for us.