Pinnacles National Park - Old Pinnacles Trail to Balconies Cave

 Waxing Gibbous Moon

We should probably stop using the word "unseasonably." Who knows what the weather will bring and how it fits with what the calendar says or what we are used to? Does that even make any sense to someone who was born in this century? I don't know. 

One thing for sure is that to me, it was pretty hot yesterday in Pinnacles National Park for the first week in February. I didn't mind at all, in fact I welcomed the warmth, but I was seriously over-dressed and shed a couple of layers in the first mile of my hike. I didn't get all riled up about it. It was what it was, just like the 20th century, when February was winter time, was what IT was.

I needed a break from rassling with traffic on Highway 101 to reach another Bay Area Ridge Trail destination, so yesterday I took a country drive 38 miles from my camp to Pinnacles National Park. My intention was to hike part of the North Wilderness Trail from the Old Pinnacles trailhead, but for some reason, where the route splits in two directions, my feet turned up toward the Balconies Trail instead. It's all good, winter, spring, summer, or fall.

Much of the trail was shaded along the West Fork of Chalone Creek.

Very unusual erosional remnant, reminiscent of a lava tube.

The underside of the eroded half tube-shaped feature.

A pinnacle!

Layers of volcanic tuff hardened, tilted, and eroded over time.

Balconies Cave is accessible from both the west entrance to the park near Soledad and the east entrance south of Hollister. A flashlight is required after you go inside unless you are one of the oddball cat slash bat people among us who can see or perceive echo signals in the darkness. I would recommend a hardhat, knee pads, and gloves as well because you may bang your head, slip, and skid on your hands and knees with regularity in this cave. I didn't bring any of those things with me on this hike, mainly because I have been there and done that and I am too old for that sh*t. I was quite content to clamber over the rocks which led to the entrance and inspect those things which were visible in daylight.

The caves at Pinnacles are talus caves, not limestone caves. So if you decide to go inside with your eager and nimble children, you will explore the spaces between huge jumbles of fallen rocks, not dissolved caverns with stalactites and stalagmites. Some of the spaces are quite small, some are bigger, parts of the way through the jumbles are straight and level, but most are not. What these two types of caves have in common is consistently pitch black darkness. That said, all kinds of dorks and dweebs make their way with their offspring through Balconies Cave every year and you can, too. 

I was fortunate enough to look up just as I reached the entrance and what did I see but a California condor soaring in the air space directly above me. It made a few circles before it perched on a tall pinnacle, rested a few beats, and took off. The whole thing lasted less than twenty seconds as I was also perched on some rounded, exposed boulders that required three points of contact to avoid nasty road rash and an uncomfortable airlift experience. Hence the lack of photographic evidence. However, I managed to scramble back down to level terra firma and watch while a few more condors joined in the magical soaring circus. They were wayyyy up there and my Smartyphone camera doesn't really do the telephoto thing. But if you look closely at the sky in this picture, that dark speck above and to the left of the tallest dark pinnacle is a giant bird whose ancestors almost went extinct at the hands of a careless, anonymous, invasive species. Go see one. It will make you feel hopeful.

Fly high and stay free.

Peace, Love, and Long Live the Condor,

Jim

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