My daughter and I went back to Pinnacles National Park for the third week in a
row. Having been bitten by the climbing bug, she couldn't seem to get enough of
it. I picked out a few more of the easier routes from David Rubine's guidebook
and we headed out from San Jose by 5:30a. It wasn't expected to be as warm as
it had been the past few weeks so we didn't start quite as early as we'd done
the previous week. The weather
turned out to be quite nice, even a little chilly for the first climb. While
driving south on US101, we witnessed a weak
orange glow in the sky creating a plume
of smoke behind it, then suddenly going out, the smoke remaining. It was about
half an hour before sunrise but the cloud had a faint glow unlike the other
clouds in the sky that were quite dark. UFO? Plane going out in flames? While
pondering what it could be, I suggested it might have been a rocket test from
Vandenberg AFB in Santa Barbara County. Jackie looked it up on her phone and
sure enough, their launch schedule listed a Delta II rocket launch for just this
time. "How did you know that?!" she asked incredulously. I just smiled. It gets
harder to impress our kids after they become teenagers, so I take my trophies
when I can.
The sun was up by the time we turned off SR25 to the East Side entrance, the
lit up as we drove into the Bear Gulch area just after 7a. Our first stop was
not far up the trail at , where we were looking for a
three star, 5.6
route called The Portent. Having never been to this area before, we
had trouble matching the routes to the maps in our guidebook. I didn't want to
get the start of the route wrong because any mistake meant we'd be climbing at
a grade above 5.7 which would surely be trouble. After walking back and forth
along the wall with no better understanding, we decided to try something else.
Monolith
This is an impressive feature poised above the Bear Gulch Cave System, a giant
rock conglomerate 80ft high, or overhanging on all
sides. There are more than a dozen steep face-climbing routes scattered about
on three sides of the 50'x100' rectangular
block and only one of them was 5.6. In fact, it was a run out "5.6R" rating that
gave us great pause before we started. On the east side of the block there is
a boulder leaning against it that serves as the start. The first bolt is about
15' up and slightly to the right where the fall line goes down 30' into the cave
below the starting boulder. Though there is a bolt on the starting boulder to
serve as an anchor, a fall before the first bolt would surely
result in something close to - if not actually - death. And the real problem is
the second bolt which is run out at more than twice the height of the first
bolt which would result in an even worse fall. Jackie wanted to lead the route
but the first bolt made her hesitate. I offered that I could probably lead to
the first bolt if that would help, but she decided to do it herself. And she
did a fine, job, too, cautiously moving up from one small knobby hold to the
next. We both relaxed after the , then
slowly worked up to a more nervous state until she had clipped into
. After that the climbing gets
with juggier holds and in less than five more minutes she had
the belay anchors above. 15 minutes later I had
, quite impressed with her lead. We weren't quite done,
because atop the large, flat summit area is which
forms . Low fifth class on the west
side leads to box bolted to the top of this higher block.
Jackie's downclimbing skills still need some work - though I remind her to study
the moves she used to get up, she wasn't as confident on the way back down where
I helped her with a few foot placements to complete the sequence. The
from the Monolith was fun, with the added twist that we
had to go down at a slight angle to return to the starting block.
The Unmentionable
After leaving the Monolith, we hiked the upper portion of the Bear Gulch Cave
Trail to ,
then the Rim Trail to the High Peaks Trail which took
us to The Unmentionable. We had passed by this feature on our previous trip and
without knowing it had a name, noted its phallic resemblance. A short but steep
leads down from the High Peaks Trail to the feature where
a 5.7 route goes up the shoulder from the uphill side. Jackie led this short
climb, about 25' in length with a single bolt to clip just before a bulgy move.
My photos
of her climbing the route came out blurry, so the first one I have is of her
to the summit. There are some bolts on the left side of
the route that can be used for a harder variation. After
the summit, Jackie went up in fine style, the crux coming
at the very start. When it was
my turn, I couldn't repeat the first crux move and didn't get even a foot off
the ground before calling it quits. It's really quite remarkable how quickly
her skills have exceeded mine.
The Anvil
On our way back down the High Peaks Trail we stopped for a scramble route up
The Anvil, rated 5.1X. The "X" in this case seems a bit dramatic. On the side
away from the trail, there are scoops in the feature which allow it to be
ascended in two steps. The has two juggy holds above which
make it fairly easy. The is trickier. Jackie went up to
of the shallow scoop, raining down bits of loose rock as she
went. This suggested to
me that it wasn't the usual way up and I found the shallow scoop easier and
cleaner. There were numerous bolts
that could be used to rappel from, or
top-rope the feature on its harder sides, but these went unused by us. As the
feature sits right next to the trail, it can't help but draw the attention of
passerbys. As we were descending, a gentleman with his wife and daughter
watched us and then excitedly wanted to climb it himself. It was quickly
apparent that he had little climbing experience and I was torn between exiting
quickly before an impending disaster, or helping him with the effort. I chose
the
latter, showing him the easier moves on the lower step first. Luckily, he
thought better of it and decided just getting to the base of it was good enough.
As we were leaving, we saw his daughter ,
but thankfully she, too, backed off it.
Heading back down the High Peaks Trail, we turned at the
leading to the top of . Here we
spent some time examining the
various anchor bolts above the wall, matching them to our guidebook photos and
trying to
determine where The Portent was located. We had a good idea of what we were
looking for and memorized some of the features below so we could find it upon
returning to the bottom. Unfortunately, by the time we had returned to the
trail system and found our way back to the bottom of Discovery Wall, a party of
three had just started up the route. Jackie wanted to wait until they were done,
but as they were a party of three on a 2-pitch route I suggested it could be
hours before they were done. We would leave it for another time.
Tourist Trap
Jackie wanted to get one more climb in before calling it a day, so we stopped
off at an area called , one of the closer features to the
parking lot. We passed by a trio of climbers on the 5.7
(with a 5-foot roof at the top) to
the next area to the right. We climbed the ledge system to the start of Pastie,
a short 5.7 climb with a couple of bolts. this one as well,
finishing it so quickly that we thought there must be more to it. She belayed
me up from a pair of anchor bolts after which we examined the cliffs behind
it, but seeing no more bolts anywhere, concluded that was it (the feature behind
we later found was the Ignorable Cliffs). We rapped back down off Pastie to our
gear, packed up, and headed back to the parking lot. Jackie decided that was the
best day yet. She also led all the routes this time, so I think there's some
correlation there...