Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Today we headed out to the Pinnacles— Pinnacles National Park— to hike. It's a day-adventure I've been looking forward to for a while, and finally today our schedules and the weather aligned. And oh, what nice weather it was. The park had a high temperature of 78° today, warm enough to feel, well, warm but not so hot that we'd regret being out in the sun. I mean, in the summer it gets really smokin' out there, like 100+. Thus a clear day in early spring is really the perfect time to visit. Like today!

We got off to a late start today. It wasn't until around 9:30 that we left the house. I'm not too proud to admit that I had some cold feet this morning about the hike, after planning it for the past week. The problem was I slept poorly last night. I considered whether I wanted to take an "easy day" today. I'd still go hiking somewhere; but somewhere shorter and easier. Intellectually I knew that I'd be happy once I got to the Pinnacles, but it took some pushing to get through the blahs.

The drive down to the Pinnacles was enjoyable. At 9:30am on Easter Sunday there wasn't a crazy amount of traffic. I mean, all 4 lanes in both directions on US-101 through San Jose were busy, just not bumper-to-bumper at 60mph like it sometimes gets.

42 miles out from home we reach the town of Gilroy. This is the southern end of what anyone could reasonably call the Bay Area or metropolitan San Jose. Though people do commute in from farther out than this. 😳 Beyond Gilroy US 101 narrows to 2 lanes in each direction and becomes a bit of a country highway as it traverses, well, countryside into Central California.

At 48 miles we reach the San Benito County line. Yes, 48 miles and we've just left the county. Where I grew up on the East Coast I could drive 48 miles and it'd involve 3 states. Welcome to the Western US! Government boundaries aside, we're happy to note as we cross the county line that the mountains around us are all still green.

At around 60 miles we near Prunedale. The only nice thing I have to say about Prunedale is that they finally allowed Caltrans to widen and straighten US-101 through their community so it's no longer a traffic bottleneck. Now it's a pleasure driving through the short mountain range here and dropping into the Salinas Valley on the other side.

At 67 miles we roll into the north side of Salinas. We're hungry so we stop for brunch at a couple of fast food restaurants. I eat at Carl's Jr.; Hawk gets Sonic Drive-In across the street. Then we get donuts for dessert from a nearby shop.

While in Salinas I have a... wardrobe malfunction. A seam ripped in my hiking shorts. I briefly consider a) just hiking for the day with a hole in my pants or b) just going home because I'm so pissed about it. Hawk points out we're literally right in front of a Wal-Mart, and almost certainly they have something inside I can buy and wear. I grumble about Wal-Mart fashion before, to my surprise, I find not one but three items of clothes to buy there!

South of Salinas 101 is a chill road. It's straight and level as it traverses farmland in the agricultural Salinas Valley. There's a Steinbeck museum here. He was born in Salinas and used it as inspiration for many of the settings in his books, including it being featuring literally in his classic, The Grapes of Wrath. I've read Salinas people are so pleased about it they've held book burnings in his honor.

At 97 miles we're finally in Soledad. This small town is where we turn off the highway and head up into the rugged hills of the Gabilan Mountains. You probably haven't heard of the Gabilan Mountains. But one thing interesting about them is they're so remote they're crossed than fewer roads than the Sierra Nevada range with its 14,000' peaks. And even state highway 146, which leads to the park, doesn't cross these mountains. It stops halfway across. It stops halfway across, in the park, then picks up again on the other side! The only way across Pinnacles National Park is on foot. That's how you know you're in a hard-core hiking park.

What comes after Friday Night Halfway? Would you believe Saturday Night Halfway? After driving to Folsom last night, halfway to Bassi Falls today (okay, it was mathematically more than halfway), this afternoon we drove from near Bassi Falls to Madera, California.

"What's Madera halfway to?" might be one of your questions.
"And where even is Madera?" might be your other.


To answer the second one first, Madera is in California's Central Valley, a bit north of Fresno. In fact Madera, with a population of almost 70,000, is now considered part of the Fresno metropolitan area, which has a regional population of 1.4 million. Fresno proper has almost 600,000 residents, making it the 5th largest city in California. It's behind San Francisco, which is only the 4th largest city in the state!

Our plan for tomorrow is to drive up into the Sierra Nevada, through the town of Oakhurst, to hike Lewis Creek. There are a number of falls there we've enjoyed visiting in the past.

Driving to Madera today was quite a haul. After we had an early dinner back in Folsom it was 3 hours of solid driving to Madera. That's on top of the driving— and hiking— earlier in the day. Driving-wise I logged almost 300 miles today. But we arrived at the Hampton Inn in Madera around 7:15pm with nothing else on the agenda for the rest of the evening except rest & relaxation. ...Well, that and a bit of food and a delicious milkshake from Sonic Drive-In a few minutes away.

In my last blog about hiking at Pinnacles National Park this weekend I wrote about the signature experience - climbing the footholds blasted into the rock. It's one we enjoy on many of our trips there. This trip we found a new signature experience in addition to that.

One of the reasons the Pinnacles was upgraded from national monument status to the vaunted national park designation several years ago is that it's a habitat for the rare and endangered California Condor. Once near the brink of extinction, with only 27 individual birds surviving, all in captivity, there are now over 500 of the species alive, many reintroduced to the wild in California's Centra Coast region.

So, as you might have guessed, after all that climbing and crouching through tight spaces, we came out atop the High Peaks Loop and saw a California Condor sunning itself atop a large rock.



Condors are huge birds. Adults can grow to about 4' (120cm) tall with wingspans of anywhere from 8-10' (2.5 - 3.0m). This bird, which I dub "Mateo" (can you guess why?), didn't seem quite that big. Mateo might be a juvenile.

Here's some video I shot of Mateo preening himself.


We've seen California Condors once or twice before in zoos. This was our first sighting in the wild. What a special way to cap a fun hike at The Pinnacles!

Sunday we hiked up to the High Peak Loop at The Pinnacles, aka Pinnacles National Park near the town of Soledad, south of Salinas in California's Central Coast region.

After starting off from the west side trailhead with a classic view of the mountain (previous blog) we started the climb. It would be about 1,200' vertical to the top. The trail starts out easy at first going through a canyon that had a bit of water flowing even in this dry year, then gets slightly steeper as it angles up the side of this ancient volcano.



Yes, the Pinnacles is a volcano. ...Actually, it's half a volcano. It sits on the San Andreas Fault. The tectonic plates at the fault slide past each other at an average rate of 1.3 inches per year. After 23 million years the other half of the volcano is now 195 miles away, near the town of Lancaster, California. What's left here are lots of oddly shaped spires of volcanic rock, mostly rhyolite.

The hike is up, up, up. Thankfully it's not merciless like the Koko Head Tramline trail on Oahu. OMG, that was an butt-kicker. This trail involves more ascent but is easier to manage. Soon enough we reached the split for the High Peaks Loop. We opted to start with the Tunnel Trail, which begins by going down slight. Yay, down... right?



Not so fast. The trail descends through the tunnel... but after that it's back to up, up, up.

The tunnel is deep underneath a towering rock. It's cool in there in the summer. That's a welcome break when the weather's hot. One thing about the Pinnacles is that even though it's in the Central Coast region, which has generally cool summers, the park is just enough inland in the rugged, remote Gabilan Mountains that it gets smokin' out here in the summer. Like, by the end of May temperatures break 100° pretty frequently. That's the main reason we've been trying to come out here for the past several weeks in March and April.



Anyway, once through the tunnel, it's up, up, up some more. ...Wait, I already said that. Well, it's up, up, up through crazy rock spires of this ancient half-volcano. ...Wait, I already said that, too. 🤣 Well, there are a lot of rock spires here.

Stay tuned, more to come!

UPDATE: We climb foot-holds blasted into bare rock!

Last Sunday we drove down to Santa Cruz in the morning. We parked along West Cliff Drive, as the picture in my blog from nearly a week ago shows. We didn't just park to enjoy the beauty of the Pacific Ocean crashing against the cliffs... though that certainly would have been an option! At least 25% of the cars parked there were people just relaxing in their cars enjoying the sights, sounds, and smells (fresh air!) of the ocean. Alas most of them were borderline homeless hippies. 😅 We got out of our car, without smoking weed, and went for a walk.



West Cliff Drive is our usual go-to spot when visiting Santa Cruz. The street winds along the oceanfront cliffs west of downtown. Ritzy houses line one side of the street; on the other is a sidewalk, and not far from that, the crumbling edge of the cliffs. There are also one or two older houses hanging on on the seaward side of the road. The fun is walking along the sidewalk, with its multi-million dollar views, and following various little use trails that descend partway down the rocks or all the way to tiny beach coves.



While the far off views are beautiful, so too are the close up views. In the pictures above you can see patches of yellow flowers in the plants growing on the edge of the cliff. They produce blooms in other colors, too, like this beautiful purple.



This hardy plant growing all over the cliffs is carpobrotus edulis, commonly known as Ice Plant (among other names). As beautiful and hardy as it is, it's also an invasive species. I wrote about it on another trip to the Central Coast six months ago. It chokes out native plants that are important food source for native animals. So I didn't feel bad about occasionally stepping on it as I took pictures and walked some of the narrow foot trails along the cliffs. 🤣

Usually when we walk West Cliff Drive we park about 1.5 miles up from the fishing pier and walk east to the pier, the boardwalk amusement park, and the city's main beaches. It's a fantastic trek of about 4 miles roundtrip. This visit, though, we decided to go the other way. 😨 But that's not bad... the other way leads to Natural Bridges State Beach!



We walked around through the park, down to the beach from the backside, then up the cliff to this overlook. From here it was a relatively easy return to our car less than a mile away.

Our return trip to Garrapata State Park last weekend didn't end with our hike around the Whale Peak loop. Actually, our trip to that park did, but not our day trip to the Central Coast. After returning to the car we continued further south, stopping for lunch at a busy food counter that's 87 years old. You might think, "Pfft. 87 years old, that's nothing."  But that's about as old as modern human development gets in this remote area. This beautiful but rugged coastal mountain geography was almost impassible until Highway 1 was built in the 1930s.

Heading south wasn't about getting lunch, though. It was about making a longer day of our day trip and hoping the weather might improve. Alas, the weather didn't improve, but we tried to make the best of it by driving down to Julia Pfeiffer Burns state park for a short visit. You know, the home of McWay Falls. Okay, both of those names are unfamiliar? Well, maybe you've seen it in a book, pamphlet or blog about California scenery, a calendar of California waterfalls, or on the cover of National Geographic.



That's McWay Falls. In obscure, little Julia Pfeiffer Burns state park. On the rugged central coast area of California that few people were able to get to until Highway 1 was built here in 1932.

And I didn't even go in the park to take that picture. I took it from the side of Highway 1. Cars were driving past me 2 meters away. Highway 1 along the central coast is routinely listed as one of the top scenic drives in the US. With views like this you can see why.

We didn't just marvel at the falls from the side of the road, though. We walked into the park and along a short trail there. We could do that because the park was open! It had been closed for several years after a flood wiped out many trails in the park.



Only part of the park is open even now. Most of the trails are still closed due to damage that hasn't been fixed, and even the McWay Falls trail is only open to about half its previous length. We walked as far as was safe. A big chain-link gate blocked the trail past that point.

In case you're wondering why the perspective on McWay Falls looks nearly the same between the outside and inside-the-park pictures, modulo zoom and cropping, it's because the trail in the park actually isn't that far away from the roadside. It's maybe 15 meters down the cliff. For reference, the falls is about 25 meters (about 80') tall.

What else is different about the photos? Well, with the second one I had fun experimenting with my variable neutral density filter again. Yeah, that's the one I've written about using at Bassi Falls and Elk Creek Falls. Reducing the light into the camera let me shoot at a slow shutter speed, about 0.14s, that blurs moving things such as water. I forgot to take my tripod with me on this trek (a tripod is helpful for stabilizing the camera when shooting slow exposures) so I braced it against that aforementioned chain link fence. It's safety and photography! 😂

The fun thing about hiking along the craggy ocean bluffs on California's Central Coast is that every bend you round, nay even every 50' in a straight line you walk, a new perspective comes into view and it's beautiful. That's why this "Whale Peak Loop" trail we were hiking Saturday (see part 1 blog) starts out being about anything but Whale Peak itself. Oh, we'll get there eventually. It's just there's so much beauty down at the coast to spend time walking in.



Part of what makes these scenes beautiful is the brilliant red and green ground cover. It's also a bit surprising. I don't remember seeing so many plants growing on these bluffs on past trips. Without it you'd see a lot more bare rock. Craggy, bare rock is beautiful in its own way, too. I know I like it. Its beauty is subtle, though, and hard to capture with photographs.

So, yay for plants, right? Better pictures and better for the environment, right? Uh, not so much.



The plant that's growing all over the cliffs in this area is named ice plant, Latin name carpobrotus edulis. It's a succulent that grows thick, triangular leaves. You can see them in the enlargement pic above. (It's a crop at 100% from the original of the pic I shared above it. It's from near the edge of the frame with a super-wide angle lens so image quality is not the best.) 

Ice plant's red and green leaves create striking colors. And it makes flowers, too. It wasn't flowering during this visit, though on previous visits to California's Central Coast we've seen it flowering in brilliant yellow, pink, and magenta.

So what's not to like? Well, ice plant is a nonnative species from South Africa. It was planted in California starting about 100 years ago to help control erosion along rail and road embankments. It did that job well and it really thrives in the Central Coast environment. And that's where the problem lies. It thrives so much it has choked out many other species of plants.

One plant or another, what's the difference? you might ask. Well, some of those plants are needed by native animal species for food or nests. By killing off those plants, ice plant is causing these animals to die off. Ice plant also spreads easily over cliffs and dunes. The bare rock and sand are important habitat for other animals. With loss of habitat they're dying off, too. Various state and local groups are working to remove areas of ice plant and seeing rapid return of native plants and animals. Sometimes it's Kill a plant, save an animal.

Keep reading! Hiking Whale Peak Loop, part 3

This Saturday we decided to venture back to the Central Coast. Yes, we were just there a week ago. We even went back to basically the same place, Garrapata State Park.  Our hike in Soberanes Canyon was a (partial) repeat of one we've done many times before, but our walk along the ocean bluffs opened our eyes to an area we'd overlooked on numerous previous visits. This time we made a beeline for a loop trail around another section of ocean bluffs and up over a low peak.

We had a few motivations for this trip. The biggest one was, "Because it's freakin' beautiful down there." The second was revenge. We were disappointed by the all-day fog last week and wanted to see it again in the sunshine. Alas, today the fog was even worse than one week ago. But we still enjoyed the beauty of the area. Certain colors of the wildflowers and native plants come out better in the dim light. You'll see that when I post pictures soon.

A third reason we did a return trip this weekend is the wildfire smoke that covers much of the state. We've been yearning to visit various places in the Sierra Nevada— especially the Gold Lakes Basin, which we haven't been to in.... [checks blog]... 3 years. But that area is deep in the smoke right now... and we know what that's like because it was smoky there from wildfires when we last visited 3 years ago! Hopefully the smoke will clear enough in that corner of the state soon that we can get back out there for a trip this season, perhaps over Labor Day weekend.

UPDATE: When I say "It's worse" I mean the weather. Despite that we had enjoyable hikes at two parks. I've written four blogs with pictures from these treks:

• Hiking the Whale Peak Loop
• A Beautiful, Harmful Plant (Whale Peak Loop, part 2)
• Atop Whale Peak
• McWay Falls

Saturday this weekend we traveled down to California's Central Coast to hike at Garrapata State Park. I wrote about the trip overall in a blog yesterday. Here I follow up with pictures and notes from our hike out & back in Soberanes Canyon.

As I noted in that other blog entry, hiking out & back in Soberanes Canyon was not our first choice. We thought we'd hike up & back Rocky Ridge via the oceanfront trail. Alas that trail is closed from fire damage— still, after a fire that occurred 5 years ago! The fire delivered a one-two punch to many mountainsides as it first burned off all their vegetation then left them susceptible to flash flooding. It's really the floods that occurred a few months after the fires that damaged hiking trails.



Well, the thing about walking in beauty is that beauty can be found all around. Rocky Ridge trail closed? Let's hike Soberanes Canyon instead. It's not the same form of beauty; it's beauty in its own way. In this case, today, with wildflowers all around.

Curiously this lush, full canyon was also once savaged by floods. Well, once within living memory anyway. When we first hiked this trail in the late 1990s there had been flash floods during days of heavy rain a few months earlier. The floor of this canyon with a 50-wide swath of destruction. Plants and bushes were wiped away, small trees were wiped away, even the trail was wiped away. We rock-hopped up the stream bed for a mile.



Today there's virtually no trace of that flood from 23 or so years ago. The plants and flowers have all grown back. Even the shape of the land seems to have recovered. Thus I am sure the land that burned will recover. ...In fact if it burned down here, it clearly already has!

The canyon narrows as you follow it up into the mountains. The trail darts from wildflower covered hillsides into riparian zones like this as it crosses the stream in a few places.



This little stream that today you can hop across... yes, this stream cut that 50-foot-wide swath of destruction years ago.

"So what are you hiking to?" a person might ask.

The thing is, right now there's no to. Other than to the end of the trail. In past years we'd hiked the Soberanes Canyon trail until it joins with the back end of the Rocky Ridge trail, then up the steep backside of Rocky Ridge, over the top which in the spring is carpeted with a riot of wildflowers, and down the stunning but toe-jamming oceanfront side of Rocky Ridge.

"So what do you see when you get there?"

Literally, we see a "trail closed" sign. But that's not the point. The point is we're not getting there, we are there. We're there the whole time. In beauty we walk.



On the way back from... halfway though our walk in beauty... I paused to shoot closeups of some of the wildflowers.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the photographic challenges of shooting flowers with this blurred background effect when we visited Spokane's flower garden. The challenges were the same here. The challenges are satisfying to face, though, because I have the knowledge, skill, and tools to surmount them.



Sometimes beauty is gazing miles out to see, sometimes it's thousands of feet overhead to a mountain, sometimes it's inches from my nose inside the petals of a wildflower. With beauty all around me I walk.

The adventure continues! Keep reading: Walking the Bluffs at Garrapata

Last week was a rainy one across much of California. Dry weather that ran through December and most of January finally broke. And break it did, with a veritable "Atmospheric River" dumping precipitation across the state. When heavy rain follows an extended dry period it creates risk of mud slides as parched ground is not as able to absorb the rain as well. The risk is especially severe in areas that have experienced wildfire recently. Fire kills the grasses, shrubs, and trees whose roots help hold the soil together; moreover it scorches the ground itself making it even more unable to absorb water.

All of these factors came together last week along California's remote central coast. Water gushing down a rain-swollen creek overwhelmed the land around it and washed away a section of California Highway.



Example coverage: CNN.com article, 30 Jan 2021 tells the basics; San Francisco Chronicle article 29 Jan 2021 has great, high-resolution pictures plus an explainer about what an "Atmospheric River" is.

Landslides are not uncommon on California's rugged Central Coast. In 2017 a massive slide covered almost a half mile of the road. Repairs were completed in 2018, routing the road around the new coastline. Just driving on Highway 1 you can see evidence in the roadway of numerous repairs to fix slides and washout damage. Because of the history of slides authorities closed the road to thru traffic last week— thus nobody was injured when a large section of road went crashing into the ocean.

BTW, why does anyone care about a narrow road in a remote place? Well, aside from the tiny number of people for whom it's the only way in or out of the places they live and work, the Central Coast is an amazing scenic tourist area. Check out some of my roadside pictures from a road trip in 2019 here and here.