Vagabond Tales- Pinnacles National Park in California

August 19, 2023

For our one day at the Pinnacles, a good hot hike was in order. We took the Balconies, Cliffs and Cave Loop. Leaving 78° weather in the city of Soledad we wound our way up to the Pinnacles’ headquarters where we realized the temperatures were rising. Got our US National Park’s Passports stamped with today’s date, purchased our park sticker and watched the park video. It was there we found out the California Condor had been reintroduced to the park in 2003 and is flourishing. We spotted several birds as you can see in the photo below but they were too high to discern whether they were Condors or turkey vultures.

Not Fay away, there were climbers climbing the face.
There were several ways to skin this cat…I mean trail. We chose to do the Cliffs first, then the caves and we finished with the Balconies which broiled us in the 97° afternoon.
Born in the fire, these formations rise out of the ground to create beautiful and striking vistas every way you turn.
The caves were probably one of the most challenging parts of the trail. We wore head lamps in this unlit cave and did quite a bit of rock scrambling and squatting low to avoid head bangers.
It wasn’t this bad, but probably the most disheartening part of the trip was when a couple other hikers we passed going up and we were climbing down, told us we were hiking the trail in a direction that made it more difficult.
My Guy!
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