This one has been on our to-do list for years, and everything finally lined up. We left our little patch of coastal paradise and drove up to Soledad in Central California’s Salinas Valley (“Salad bowl of the world”), spent the night in a cheap motel, and drove into the park at around 8AM.
Going out early is important here as it often gets quite hot, there’s little shade or shelter on the trails, and no water outside of the two visitor centers on the east and west of the park. If you go, take PLENTY of water with you; it’s not just the sun and heat, it’s very dry and you’ll not notice you’re sweating. The most common medical issue park rangers face is dehydration. We hiked a total of 10.5 miles with several stops for water, lunch, condors, and to take in the views, and even at a spring temperature of 85 to 90, we cooked on the sun-washed trails in the higher country.
IANAG, but the geology is interesting: this is almost all volcanic in origin. From the National Park site:
The granitic basement is the Santa Lucia Granite and Granodiorite. These granites formed when masses of molten lava slowly cooled as they rose through the earth’s crust to a point where they completely solidified. A slow cooling process allows individual crystals to grow fairly large. Subsequent uplift from faulting and erosion of overlying material exposed these rocks at the earth’s surface. These are the oldest rocks in the park, 78-100 million years old. They form the basement upon which the rest of the rocks at the Park lie.
The Pinnacles Volcanic Formation formed approximately 23 million years ago as it was extruded and deposited atop the granitic basement. The magma that was the source of all the volcanics was rhyolitic in origin. The formation consists of rocks such as banded and massive rhyolite, some andesites and dacites and various pyroclastic units.
The High Peaks consists of a relatively strong, well-consolidated breccia. The layers of breccias are thought to have formed as the result of material slumping off the sides of the volcano near the vents causing large landslides. The volcano was likely near water and the landslides traveled as massive turbidity currents under water that spread the material considerable distances until coming to rest near distant edges of the volcano. Volcanic ash and rhyolitic lava flows are interlayered with these breccias. Subsequent burial and compaction hardened these layers into the consolidated rock we see today. Recent faulting, fracturing and erosion have sculpted these rock layers into vertical cliffs and spires sometimes several hundred feet high.
The volcanic activity that made the Pinnacles happened about 22 million years ago, and 200 miles to the south! The formation(s) came from the Farallon plate subducting (being overridden by the North American plate); as the Farallon plate was subducted, it heated the plate into magma and the pressure then forced the magma up through various faults to the surface in the form of volcanic eruptions. Once the Farallon was completely subducted under the NA plate, the next plate to the west, the Pacific plate, started grinding along the edge of the North American plate, as it does today, moving north basically along the famous San Andreas fault. That grinding progress has moved the Pinnacles formations north from point of origin. Again, from the National Park site:
Once the Farallon plate had been completely overridden, subduction ended. With no more magma to fuel them, the coastal volcanoes dried up and began eroding. But all was still not quiet in the tectonic zone. For right behind the Farallon plate was the Pacific plate, and rather than being subducted like its predecessor, it ground against the North American plate’s western edge until a small portion of the American plate snapped along the stress lines and became attached to the Pacific plate’s upper edge.
A transform boundary had come into being. And so has the San Andreas Fault zone, a crack in the earth that stretched more than six hundred miles from the Gulf of Mexico to the Mendocino coast north of San Francisco. Directly in its path, and now astride the two plates, was the Pinnacles volcanic field. As the newly broken sliver of California began its strike-slip displacement journey northwest, thanks to the movement of the Pacific plate, it took with it two-thirds of the Pinnacles’ volcanic mass. Pinnacles now lies 195 miles north of its birthplace near Los Angeles, CA. The journey is far from over, however, as the San Andreas Fault zone continues to slip at a rate of 1 inch/year.
Some people like to hike in the broiling summer sun; my hot-sun-exercise days are over, so I recommend going in the spring or late fall. This being one of the wettest springs in recent years, most of California is swimming in flowers. The Pinnacles is no exception:
Finally...CONDORS!!
We saw a number of California Condors in the air, some adults and others juveniles, but condor #626 was nice enough to land at a small stream at an overlook area just as we were arriving on the trail. According to the innerwebs, she was born and raised at an Oregon zoo and was released as an adult. She seemed to allow humans to be near, though she kept her eyes on us and shyed a bit when a new hiker arrived. I’m happy to say that everyone that came by while she was on the ground was very quiet, slow to move, and respectful.
Some frame captures of iphone videos of #626 hopping-flying down the hill from her drinking spot:
I’ll finish with a quick photo of your diarist. Thanks for reading!