Pinnacles National Park

On March 13th, 2020, Greg and I drove two hours south from the Bay Area to Pinnacles National Park to face a Friday the 13th CURSE!

Someone (cough, cough, GREG) forgot their harness at home... after loading it up with all the gear we would need for our climbing trip. Sad!

Oh well. I pulled out the map and quickly planned our alternate adventure. We were going to hike the High Peaks trail! I had actually seen this trail online and really wanted to do it but we wouldn't have had time to climb and hike in the same day. Hopefully I can return someday soon to climb. :)

Driving in, we were about 15 minutes away and I wondered when it would start to look like we were approaching a national park. Then, all of a sudden, the pinnacles just rose out of the farm land.

Upgraded in 2013 from being a national monument, Pinnacles is a fairly new park!

The formations are really cool. And you can see a lot of bird nests on them! Some of the climbing was closed during our visit to avoid nesting areas.

It's cool how climbing-friendly the park seemed to be too.

The best part about this trail was that the views were non-stop!

The most steep and exposed sections had metal railings for support.

The trail work for this trail system must have been brutal. Apparently a lot of these trails were made in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps. Oof.

It was only supposed to be in the 70s this day, but it got really hot in the canyon!

Greg and I found some really fun rock to boulder on and freaked out some older people by climbing.

We hung out here for a while and watched SO MANY condors and raptors soar around.

This is definitely one of my new favorite national parks. I can't wait to come back! We are officially Pinn-Heads.