Pinnacles National Park is an amazing park, only 2 hours from the South Bay. Here is a great blurb about it from the National Park Service website; Established in 1908 to preserve the incongruent and beautiful rock formations for which Pinnacles is named, the Park originally protected only 2,060 acres. It now encompasses about 26,000 acres in the southern portion of the Gabilan Mountains, one of a series of parallel northwest-trending ridges and valleys that make up the Central Coast Range. Although there is camping there, it is near enough for a challenging, fun day hike. From there, I took the Bear Gulch Trail through the talus cave, which was SO COOL. This part of the hike was very kid friendly, and it was seriously amazing even though the lower part of the cave was blocked off to protect the colony of bats living there. After I crawled through a hole in the rock to exit the cave, it was easy to jump on the Moses Spring Trail to the reservoir. From there, I picked up the Rim Trail and followed that all the way to the High Peaks Trail.
The Hike Peaks Trail is definitely not for the faint of heart. The hike up to Scout Peak is challenging but fine; however, the part of the trail that heads north after you pass the rest rooms is so crazy that its official name on the park map is "Steep and Narrow." There are guard rails and individual footsteps carved out of the rock. I found it thrilling, but I passed a little boy with his parents and he looked really scared that he would fall. After passing Hawkins Peak, the trail descends pretty slowly. I took the Condor Gulch Trail back to the Bear Gulch Day Area. Unfortunately I did not see any condors on the hike, but this park is one of the places where naturalists are most likely to see these highly endangered birds. The whole hike was about 6.1 miles, and it took me about 3.5 hours. Winter was a great time to visit, and I can't wait to return in the spring to see the wildflowers!
1 Comment
Mom
1/19/2016 05:09:02 am
Looks like you had a wonderful day! Think this hike would not be for me though. The geography is fascinating. Glad you added the info. I do like bats.
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