Hiking Pinnacles National Park

Pinnacles National Park, in the California Pacific Coast Range, protects pinnacles which are the eroded leftovers of the western half of an extinct volcano.  Most of the volcano moved 200 miles from its original location on the San Andreas Fault, but it left part of its rim in the present location. In the meantime, the San Andreas Fault shifted 4 miles to the east of the present park.

We drove over to the park today to explore all that it has to offer.  When we arrived, we were greeted by the historic Bacon Ranch, which originally occupied 880 acres in Bear Valley.  It was run by Ben and Orea Bacon; Ben's parents settled the valley in 1865.  The homestead still stands:

Leaving the ranch, we drove up to the Bear Gulch Day Use Area and began hiking the Bear Gulch Cave Trail.

After the original volcano erupted, the present part of it -- trapped between the San Andreas on one side and a lesser fault (now called the Pinnacles fault) on the other -- began sinking downward until most of its bulk lay in a graben or ditch where it was protected by the fault-line ramparts rising high above it. In time the ramparts eroded, exposing the present Pinnacles.  Thousands of feet of overlying rubble gradually wore away. Steep ravines developed; monoliths and colonnades took their place beside massive walls and lonely pillars; boulders fell from lofty recesses to sit hanging over narrow stream channels.

We hiked up the southeast side of the chasm.  Along the way, tunnels had been carved by Civilian Conservation Corps workers, who constructed many of the trails:

Eventually, our trail led us to the entrance to Bear Gulch Cave:

The recent rainstorms have produced lots of water - enough to flood the cave floors.  As we walked through the cave, we had to navigate shallow streams:

Our path through the cave brought us to a huge underground waterfall, that was as impressive to our ears as our eyes!

Eventually, as we climbed out of the cave, we reached stone steps constructed by the CCC, which climbed alongside a waterfall streaming down from the Bear Gulch Reservoir above:

Here is a video of the waterfall spilling down from the reservoir into Bear Gulch Cave.  From atop the steps, David took this photo of Kathy worrying that the huge granite stone above her would lose its grip on the chasm wall and come crashing down on her:

But we both survived, and at the top of the stone staircase, we found a gorgeous lake - the Bear Gulch Reservoir:

We stopped here for lunch and explored the trails along the edge of the lake.  Once we had rested, we decided to continue up and around the Rim Trail.  It offered us beautiful wildflowers --

-- and a spectacular view down Bear Gulch back to where we had left our truck, and northwest beyond the park:

Finally, we got to a vista point where we could get a good look at the Pinnacles themselves:

The rim of the former volcano is breathtaking in the beauty it offers.  Not only are there brave trees finding footholds on the rocky promontories --

-- we also saw two condors and a nest with their unfledged chick!

But closer to the trail we also found other beauty.  Here was red volcanic rock playing host to multicolored lichen:

Lichen produced bright yellow-green and orange designs on the rock sculptures along our trail:

We finished our hike, overwhelmed with the geology of this place.  With the recent storms, the vibrancy of the forest, the mosses and lichens, the green understory simply left us speechless.

If you'd like to look at more photos from Pinnacles, check out additional photos on our Flickr website.