Pinnacles National Monument

A couple of weeks ago, I revisited Pinnacles National Monument – a site that I briefly stopped at in June of 2008. This time, I took the entire day and hiked starting at the Old Pinnacles trail head to the entrance of the Balconies Caves, then back out and around via the Balconies Cliffs, past the Chaparral Ranger Station up to the High Peaks via the Juniper Canyon Trail to the Tunnel Trail. Then, passing through the tunnel carved into a rock formation, I hike on to the High Peaks trail which returned me to the Old Pinnacles trail. This loop was approximately 8.4 miles and took me about 4 hours with lots of stops to take photographs. By far, the best scenery / images were up to the High Peaks. The switchback trail climbs upward from the Chaparral Ranger Station with each turn providing great views of the rock formations and the terrain below. By going in January, the weather was enjoyable in the 50’s and 60’s — on my previous trip, temperatures were well into the 90’s in the morning.

Here’s a rough sequence of the route that I took with coordinates and mapping provided by my SPOT personal GPS locating device and Google Maps:

View my gallery of photos from Pinnacles National Monument

Pinnacles National Monument – Images by Jason O. Watson