Pinnacles NP, CA
2022 Parks Road Trip Diary: Days 64-66
Pinnacles is a small and only mildly popular national park a few hours south of San Francisco. I never made it out there back when we lived in SF, so I was looking forward to seeing what I missed out on! The answer: lots of wildlife, some interesting caves, and a swimming pool! But probably more than anything else, I will remember this park for our nightly standoff with its raccoons.
Brief note about these posts
Whoops, I failed to prioritize writing these updates for a while. We returned from the road trip on September 9, 2022, and things got busy. (Iām writing this on Dec 21.) A friendās wedding, our own marriage, and trips to two other continents! Posts to come about the rest, all in due timeā¦
Itāll be a struggle to remember details from months ago, so anything I write as I catch up on these might be a bitā¦ less detailed. I hope the pictures can suffice š
Day 64: Pinnacles is Full of Wildlife
We left SF in the morning and took care of chores before setting off to Pinnacles.
Our car is relatively new, so weāre still in that phase where weāre supposed to get it serviced for free every 5,000 miles. We were ~3,000 miles past that point due to all the driving so far! So, we scheduled a service at a random Toyota dealer in Sunnyvale. They saw our Texas plates and knew they were not getting a repeat customer. Iām glad they were still cool about it.
We arrived at Pinnacles around 6pm. Surprisingly, we were almost alone there; only one or two other campsites within sight were occupied. Part of the reason mustāve been that it was brutally hot - a big change from the cool weather of the Bay Area. Our campsite had no shade, and I felt like I was getting sunburned from just minutes of standing around. We actually waited for the sun to disappear over the horizon before starting to cook dinner.
I guess the animals felt similarly, because as dusk hit, they emerged too. I couldnāt believe how many kinds of wildlife there were at the campground, and how numerous they were. The environment at Pinnacles didnāt strike me as a paradise for living creatures, but apparently I was wrong.
I bet you saw that last picture and thought āaww, how cute those two look.ā Me too. AT FIRST.
Once darkness really hit and it was time to bring the headlamps out, the raccoons emerged. In numbers. They must have had great success in finding food from past campers because they were adept at sneaking into our campsite and finding something to rifle through that we hadnāt put back in the car yet.
Picture this: the only way we could successfully finish cooking dinner was with one of us on full-time lookout, chasing and swatting after raccoons who were approaching from all directions. That photograph was obtained only after a chase led two of them up a tree, where they waited for us to forget about them.
We managed to finish the night without any losses to the raccoons. Iām not sure that the other camping groups in the area could say the same.
Day 65: At Least There Was a Pool
Pinnacles is a pretty small park, so itās easy to plan how to explore it. We started with this trail passing through most of the sights in the northern and central sections of the park (8.6 mi, 1800 ft elev gain). This is supposed to pass through the Balconies Caves, which is supposedly a worthy attraction.
It also has points where we could hopefully spot a California Condor, the largest bird in North America - a rare-ish sight! Whatās not so rare is seeing a turkey vulture, which are often mistaken for condors. But I studied up on my defining condor wing patterns so I could be sure š¤
It felt a little ominous when we were only 0.2 miles in an came across this in our path:
Fortunately we did not meet the same fate as this stoat. The hike continued on!
Sadly, the Balconies cave was closed due to an ongoing effort to clean up from past vandalism (graffiti). Kind of a bummer since I think that was the main reason to hike this route.
I did spot a condor! But only for a brief moment as it flew by overhead and I could recognize the wing pattern (š¤). It was gone before I could point it out to Judy. Only mildly exciting.
Overall this hike was a letdown, partly due to the Balconies closure, and partly because of the hot weather and high sun exposure. I bet itād be nice in late autumn.
We finished up around midday and there was no way we were going to spend the rest of the day at our unshaded desert of a campsite, so we took advantage of this parkās campgroundās incredibly unique feature: its SWIMMING POOL!
After, we had another night of raccoon battles just as fierce as the first. The whole brutal-sun and raccoon combination was unfortunate. If it werenāt so hot that we needed to hide from the sun, we could finish cooking and eating dinner before dark, before they came out. Pick your poison, I guess. I found it more fun to fight raccoons than to use up all our sunscreen.
Day 66: The Wayyy Better Hike
Today, we decided to go out and hike the Condor Gulch to High Peaks Trail (6.0 mi, 1700 ft elev gain), which hits a few other interesting features in the central and southern part of the park, namely the Bear Gulch Caves.
The beginning was similar to yesterdayās hike, but had more open views and varied landscape, which made for better photos š¤³
As the route enters the southern part of the park, the path descends into the Bear Gulch Caves, which were way cooler than I realized they were going to be.
There was nothing particularly interesting inside the cave, it was just cool that there existed this path that wound through and beneath these enormous boulders.
The hike only took us three hours, so we were done by early afternoon, leaving enough time to drive to our next destination: Sequoia / Kings Canyon NP!
post originally written 12/21, backdated to match reality