The storm and I met each other at the trailhead at noon, as if keeping a date. While I drove three hours south from Oakland that morning, the storm gathered offshore from Big Sur and blew 40 miles inland, over the Santa Lucia Mountains and the Salinas Valley, arriving just in time to unleash its first fat raindrops as I stepped out of the car.
I looked askance at the sky, hoping it wouldn’t throw too big of a wrench into my plans. I’d managed to wrangle a long weekend in Pinnacles National Park, and I aimed to see just about all of it. An abrupt patch of unruly wilderness stitched into the hills southeast of San Jose, the park encompasses only 26,600 acres with 30 miles of trails. Checking off every mile was doable in three days, I reckoned, if I kept up a brisk pace.
Pinnacles is roughly 2.5 hours from the San Francisco Bay Area by car. The park doesn’t have any hotels, but visitors can find tent sites, RV sites and canvas-sided tent cabins for rent in the sole campground. Rangers advise visitors who are planning to hike the High Peaks, Condor Gulch, Balconies or Moses Spring trails to arrive early in the morning because parking lots fill up.
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© KAREN MINOT
In a life not so long past, driving three hours to hike alone into a storm would have been a routine weekend itinerary. But my daughter’s birth 10 months earlier did a number on my routines. This is not a complaint; Louisa is a truly great baby, and my husband, Marc, and I are duly obsessed. (After we put Louisa to bed each night, we sit around and show each other pictures of her on our phones.)
And yet, sometimes I get to thinking about the carefree autonomy that Marc and I traded for parenthood. Perhaps I was in such a wistful mood when I found out I had a Friday off work in late March. Marc couldn’t skip his meetings, and Louisa is in full-time childcare. For the first time since the kid appeared on the scene, I was free to throw some gear in the trunk and get the heck out of Dodge all by myself. For one night, anyway. Not wanting to miss out on all the fun or solo parent for a three-day weekend, Marc suggested that he and Louisa join me on Saturday.
Since I’d be spending part of the trip with a squishy baby in tow, it seemed prudent to aim for an approachable adventure. Pinnacles fit the bill. We’d have a hard time getting hopelessly lost, but the park still seemed to have plenty of thrills on offer. Its eponymous pinnacles, spires of rusty orange rock, jut hundreds of feet up from the surrounding hills. These strange formations are one of the biggest draws for visitors, but the place is full of small wonders, too, if you know where and when to look: Biologists have logged nearly 500 species of bees within the park, making it one of the densest hubs of bee biodiversity on Earth. And especially since Pinnacles became a national park in 2013, its reputation as a primo wildflower destination has boomed among Bay Area day-trippers.
On my drive, the meteorologist on the radio qualified his weather warning in a way I chose to hear as reassuring, saying the system was “shaping up to be pretty strong — for spring.” Still, when I arrived at the trailhead, I felt glad I’d remembered to pack extra wool socks. I put one pair on my feet and another in my backpack, laced up my shoes and hiked off into the storm.
I was following a route tip from Alacia Welch, a wildlife biologist who’s worked with California condors at Pinnacles since 2008. Condors are North America’s largest land bird, boasting a LeBron-dwarfing 10-foot wingspan. They’re also one of the rarest birds in the world, a species with fewer than 600 individuals. The park is one of a handful of places where biologists release captive-bred condors in the wild, part of an effort to save the species after it came within 22 birds of extinction in the 1980s.
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The week before my trip, I had asked Welch for condor-spotting intel. She’d told me my best bet was to head up the Condor Gulch Trail to the High Peaks and hang out for an hour at the highest point. So up the trail I went, hiking fast to beat the chill.
My destination rose straight ahead, a rampart of spires looming around 1,000 feet above the valley floor. From below, the pinnacles had the melty, slouchy look of dripped sandcastles. I could just make out a half dozen dark shapes circling above them, but with raindrops smearing the view through my binoculars, I couldn’t tell whether these were the famous condors or regular old turkey vultures.
After 40 minutes, I gained a ridgeline and paused to catch my breath. I was futzing around in my backpack when something confusingly large moved in the corner of my eye. I looked up to see an enormous creature soar directly overhead, affording me an extended, up-close view. Welch had told me what to look for: feathers splayed out at its wingtips, a gray or pink head, and a triangular white patch under each wing. I did not need binoculars to determine that this was definitely not a turkey vulture.
The condor flew past me and settled into a lazy, descending spiral over the pinnacles. I was still gaping at it a minute later when another condor flew over, following the same path. Then three more, and another one after those. I stood alone on the wind-blasted ridge and watched as seven enormous birds — just over 1% of the world’s California condors, at last count — flapped down to land among the ledges and crevasses in the High Peaks.
I hiked on and up, following the trail as it led into the jumble of pinnacles. Right away everything got quiet: I’d rounded a corner and, like the condors, come in out of the wind. The path now meandered among the sheltered, grassy toes of the formations, which towered three, four and five stories above the trail. Up close, the rock proved crumbly and knobby, pitted with cat-sized caves. In the sudden tranquility, I slowed my steps to study the scene.
The formation that sheltered me from the storm has a fascinating geologic backstory. The pinnacles of Pinnacles National Park were once part of an ancient volcanic field that straddled two massive tectonic plates. These plates have been slowly sliding past each other for at least 23 million years, splitting the volcano in two and dragging the two halves ever farther apart. Today they’re separated by 200 miles, as Vincent Matthews, who discovered and documented this when he was a Ph.D. student in the 1960s, recently told me on the phone.
The park also is a hot spot for climbers. David Brower, who would go on to lead the Sierra Club, put up the first roped climb at Pinnacles in 1933. In the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, it was a local haunt for Bay Area climbers.
“It used to be that we went climbing at Pinnacles when it was too cold or wet in Yosemite,” said Bruce Hildenbrand, who leads a local climbing group and figures he’s spent more than 500 days climbing in the park. Over time, however, the park’s second-class status changed. “Pinnacles really has come into its own as a climbing destination,” he said.
Thankfully, everyday hikers can experience a bit of the high-angle terrain that tempts rock climbers. A half-mile section of the High Peaks Trail routed me up, around and down a cluster of pinnacles. It was hairy enough to be interesting, especially while I was alone and getting plastered by wind and rain. But with plenty of sturdy iron handrails and steps carved into the rock, plus boardwalks spanning the larger gaps, the hike felt secure enough to be fun.
In a life not so long past, driving three hours to hike alone into a storm would have been a routine weekend itinerary.
Still, by the time I emerged from the tricky stretch, I was ready to be out of the elements. I changed into dry socks before descending out of the High Peaks to Bear Gulch, where I’d parked. A few minutes later, I was pulling into the Pinnacles Campground, the park’s only overnight facility. When the forecast deteriorated earlier that week, I’d upgraded my camping reservation to a tent cabin. I’d been a bit salty about spending $154 a night for an unheated room with canvas walls, vinyl mattresses and two plastic Adirondack chairs. But not having to set up a tent alone in the rain or blow up my meager air mattress before changing into dry clothes was priceless.
Once I stopped shivering, I realized how hungry I was. For dinner, I’d packed a tub of four-day-old leftovers. The thought of them now made me sad, so I ambled over to the camp store to ask about the nearest place to get a decent burrito. The woman behind the register pointed back up the highway toward Hollister.
Condor Gulch Trail winds past a rampart of spires looming around 1,000 feet above the valley floor. A wildlife biologist suggested the author hike the trail to the High Peaks to find condors. The advice was spot-on.
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©PHILIP PACHECO
Bear Gulch Reservoir.
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©PHILIP PACHECO
View into the Hain Wilderness.
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©PHILIP PACHECO
Driving dozens of miles for a burrito would constitute a major violation of the code of camping conduct. I’ve daydreamed about instilling these values in my children since before I even thought I wanted to have kids. The point of camping, I imagine myself explaining, is to deprive yourself of basic comforts, consume substandard nutrition and avoid phones at all costs. No takeout allowed.
The light was fading. The rain picked up. The wind in the old oaks outside the camp store seemed to whisper “MARGARITA.” It occurred to me that I was alone, far from my kid, and therefore didn’t need to be modeling any values for anyone. So I drove to Hollister and ordered the burrito. It tasted great.
(FALL 2024) Peak Parenting Bear Gulch
Bear Gulch Cave Trail, one of the park’s most popular attractions, travels through a talus cave and along a waterfall. The author turned around when she reached a section of the trail that seemed to necessitate crawling up the middle of the creek itself.
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©PHILIP PACHECO
Over coffee the next morning, I studied the map, wondering whether my decision to head for the High Peaks first meant everything else would feel anticlimactic. But if the High Peaks are the scenic heart of the park, they’re not its literal high point. That distinction belongs to North Chalone Peak, an isolated summit at the end of a 4-mile trail near the park’s western border.
I had a few hours to get a good hike in before the baby and the husband arrived, so I made my way to Chalone Peak Trail. Weak sunlight filtered through an oak and madrone canopy. On either side, chunky red walls rose a good 80 feet, their faces softened by dense mats of moss in shades of chartreuse, olive, bronze and acid green. At a junction, I picked the trail heading toward Bear Gulch Cave.
The canyon floor soon narrowed into a maze of boulders ranging in size from refrigerator to starter home. I passed a sign announcing “CAUTION/ FLASHLIGHTS REQUIRED/ LOW CEILINGS/ SLIPPERY WHEN WET” just before the path disappeared into a cleft between two boulders. The trail devolved into a series of slimy stepping stones that were mostly submerged in Bear Gulch Creek, which was pouring out from the mouth of the cave. I switched on my headlamp, and the cave seemed to rise up to swallow me as I tottered along.
Geologists call Bear Gulch a talus cave. Unlike those carved out of solid rock by water, talus caves form when large boulders fall into a narrow canyon and pile up in a way that creates a passageway. The boulders wedged against each other in Bear Gulch are big enough that the angles and pockets form a dim, damp and occasionally cramped corridor. With every step, the sound of the creek seemed to rise, from a trickle to a rush to a roar.
The trail climbed a carved stone staircase beside a three-story waterfall, all but invisible in the gloom. In the upper reaches of the cave, the hiking became a bit more gymnastic: I crouched and wiggled through a few tight spaces and hopped back and forth across the stream, taking princess-like care to keep my socks dry. Then I reached a section that seemed to necessitate crawling up the middle of the creek itself. My map showed that the trail eventually popped out above ground and met up with the route to the summit, but I decided to turn around and head back out the way I’d come.
Five miles later, I was in a different world, alone atop North Chalone Peak. The slope I’d traipsed up to get there was having a full-on spring freak-out. Everything was growing and nothing was dying: Green grass, red paintbrush, purple lupine, orange poppies and yellow buttercups jostled for space under thickets of manzanita and chamise. The wet wind smelled like sage, and in the gray light, the flowers seemed to glow from within. On the bare summit, the storm swirled on all sides, engulfing me and the mountain and unleashing a stinging, horizontal rain. But periodically, the clouds parted enough to reveal the ridges of the Central Coast mountains marching away to the horizon.
I lingered a while, so I had to hustle back to the campground, where I was scheduled to meet up with Marc and Louisa. We pulled up to the cabin at the same time. I rocketed out of my car in an endorphin- and scenery-fueled outburst, raving about all the cool stuff I’d seen so far and all the hikes we had to hurry up and do.
Marc waited for me to run out of things to tell him about as we unpacked and let the baby loose on the cabin floor. He had just wrangled her and the unbelievable quantity of gear she requires into the car, then driven 120 miles down from Oakland literally single-handedly, his right hand mostly devoted to reaching back to keep Louisa fed and calm. He looked at the dry, cheerful baby. He looked out at the rain. “Doesn’t the baby need a nap?” he asked.
A pulse of antsiness shot through me at the thought of spending precious daylight hours in the tent, but I knew he was right. Resigned, I set up the travel crib in the corner of the tent.
Green grass, red paintbrush, purple lupine, orange poppies and yellow buttercups jostled for space under thickets of manzanita and chamise.
Marc and I waited a long time to expand our family. That was in large part because I was afraid that adding kids to the mix would make it too hard to pursue our other ambitions, even those as quixotic as trying to hike every mile in Pinnacles. My fears were about half accurate: Having Louisa does make it harder to do what I want. But I’m constantly surprised at how much fun I have doing whatever we do instead.
Louisa is an indifferent napper in normal life, but she was no match for the cool air in the tent or the sound of rain on the canvas roof. We hucked her into her crib, and she went out like a light. Marc picked out an aimless melody on the guitar, and I read my trashy vacation novel while the baby slept. The wind gusted mightily, and the rain turned intermittently to hail. We had no chores to do in the tent, and without cell service, we couldn’t stream anything, text anyone or read any wretched headlines.
We stayed in this little cocoon until late in the day, when Marc remembered his Wordle streak. In the morning’s scurry he’d forgotten to do the New York Times puzzle, and I watched him wrestle with the choice between breaking his streak and staying dry in the tent, or gearing up and going in search of cell service. I saw my opportunity.
“You know,” I said, unfolding the map. “I’m pretty sure you’ll get service up on this ridge,” pointing out the Blue Oak Trail, which climbs to the High Peaks from the east. Marc looked at the rain again and then at Louisa, who was starting to stir.
“All right, baby,” Marc said, suddenly alert. “It’s time to get your raincoat on!”
We were soon loading the baby into the backpack carrier and hitting the trail. Marc shouldered Louisa as we hiked 2 miles in a companionable drizzle up a caterpillar-green hillside. It was early evening by the time we got up on the ridge and our phones buzzed to life with a backlog of alerts. This was also about the time the kid realized it was closing in on her bedtime, but she was still strapped into a backpack in the gathering dusk in a chill rain, with nothing on her tiny red hands. She started to squirm.
We quickly realized that neither of us had brought mittens. Her nervous noises escalated into whines, and I thought apprehensively about the steep, wet miles that stood between us and her crib. Things were turning dire when Marc remembered the crappy umbrella at the bottom of his backpack. While he did Wordle, I rigged up the umbrella over the baby. Then I slipped out of my shoes, shucked off my socks and slipped one over each of her hands. That did the trick. Louisa chattered happily, and I squelched down the trail, sockless but inordinately proud of our parental problem-solving skills.
That night, the storm died. People came out of their tents and pitched folding chairs around campfires, and kids ran around shouting into the darkness. Marc and I stayed up late, playing a few hands of cribbage by lantern light, alternating sips of cheap beer and ginger tea. Before turning in, we made a plan for the next day to hike a big loop through another cave, past formations labeled with appealing names such as Machete Ridge and Balconies and up over the High Peaks.
Continuing her heroic performance, the baby slept until 8 the next morning. The completionist in me knew we needed to get moving to snag a parking spot at our trailhead: the internet, my friends who’d visited Pinnacles recently and the lady in the entrance booth had all warned me that parking can fill up early on weekends. But it was one of those frosty camp mornings where your brain doesn’t really work until the sun hits you straight on and warms you up.
We got moving by 10 a.m., but it was already too late: A ranger had closed the road up to the trailhead and was waving all comers into the overflow parking lot behind the campground store. Sticking to our plan would mean hiking 6 miles on a trail next to the highway to get to the start of the 12-mile loop. It was probably too much time to keep the baby in the backpack, to say nothing of the toll an 18-mile day would take on our knees.
I consulted the map and spotted the South Wilderness Trail, which squiggled away from the highway to follow Chalone Creek toward the park boundary. Maybe it would turn out to be a hidden gem?
I’ll say here that Marc has adjusted adroitly to parenthood, though it has meant surrendering much of the alone time he needs. To that end, he was plainly struggling to summon enthusiasm for Plan B. I could tell by his faraway look that he was dreaming of driving home alone, both hands on the wheel (deluxe!), and having the house to himself for a few hours.
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“Would you mind if I …?” he started.
“Please go,” I said. I understood: It is a joy to spend a sunny spring Sunday exploring a national park with one’s spouse and baby, but it is also a joy to spend it alone, loafing on the couch with no obligations on the near horizon.
There ensued a 10-minute scramble to reapportion the car seat, bottles, tiny jackets, snacks, toys and diapers between our two cars. Then Marc drove away, and it was just the two of us. I hoisted Louisa onto my back, and we set off. As I’d suspected, the first mile of our hike was a bit charmless, but the vibe improved when we turned away from the highway and headed up the Chalone Creek valley, a sandy flood plain studded with ancient, eccentric oaks.
The baby and I chitchatted as we bounced along in the sunshine. We stopped to peek into a few oak tree hollows and study the poppies. The trail crossed the creek at a shin-deep ford, and I waded across barefoot. On the far side, I parked Louisa at the water’s edge, hoping she’d splash cutely in the creek while I got my shoes back on. Instead, she promptly scooped up a handful of sand and crammed it into her mouth.
We moved on. After a while, the path grew faint, crowded by brush on both sides. We soon came to a thicket where poison oak shoots crossed the trail, like the staves of two imperial guards.
If I hadn’t been carrying the baby, I probably could have found a way to limbo under the barricade and keep hiking. I might have been tempted to hustle along with my head down, anxious to get to wherever the trail was taking me, even though I could see on the map that it hit a dead end at the park boundary a mile beyond.
I don’t know at what age a person develops a discerning eye for scenery or an expectation of scoring a parking spot, but Louisa evidently cared not a whit that our plans had gone sideways, and we’d ended up on a dusty path to no place in particular, nary a pinnacle in sight. She thumped the back of my head enthusiastically and tugged my ponytail with her grubby fists while directing a fluent string of gibberish to the crows up in the trees. The sun warmed her arms, and the breeze ruffled what little hair she had. Altogether there seemed to be very little I could teach this kid about the point of being outside that she didn’t already know. If anything, it was the other way around.
I reached awkwardly over my shoulder to disentangle her hands from my hair, and she grasped my finger and clung to it as we turned around and headed for home.
