At the start of the tour
Welcome to Moses Spring and Rim Trail
Welcome to Pinnacles National Park. You're at the foot of Bear Gulch, on the park's east side. President Theodore Roosevelt protected the first twenty-five hundred acres here as a national monument in 1908, and in 2013 the monument became a national park.
Long before any of that, Native people came here to gather what the land offered: acorns from the oaks, nuts from the gray pines, and roots and grasses for weaving baskets. Today, members of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band and the Chalon Indian Nation still work alongside the park to care for its plants.
This walk is a loop of about a mile and a half. We'll climb Bear Gulch on the Moses Spring Trail, past the talus caves, up to the Bear Gulch Reservoir, then come back along the Rim Trail, high above the canyon. I'll tell a story at each stop and stay quiet in between.
There's no drinking water along the trail, so carry at least a liter for every hour you're out, and on hot summer days, skip the middle of the day. Poison oak, stinging nettle and rattlesnakes all live here, so watch where you put your hands and feet, and stay on the trail.
Point 1 · At the stop
Welcome to Bear Gulch
Look up at the rock walls and spires around you. They began as part of a volcanic field that erupted about twenty-three million years ago, near where the city of Lancaster stands today, about a hundred and ninety-five miles to the southeast.
Then the San Andreas Fault split that volcanic field in two. The part on the west side of the fault rode north with the Pacific Plate, carrying about two-thirds of the volcanic rock with it, and the fault is still moving, at about an inch a year. The rest stayed behind.
Over millions of years, wind, rain and ice wore this rock into the crags and spires the park is named for. The High Peaks are made mostly of breccia, a reddish to gray rock of volcanic fragments welded together. Other rock here is rhyolite, lava so thick it set with flow bands, like stretched taffy.
The shaping isn't finished. Boulders still fall from the cliffs and floods still reshape the caves, so the canyon you're about to walk through is still a work in progress.
History, on the way there
On the way: Into Bear Gulch
Now for the man who made this a park. In 1891, a homesteader named Schuyler Hain arrived here from Michigan. At first he thought of the Pinnacles as little more than a local curiosity. But newspaper reporters began coming out just to see the rocks, and he came to believe that protecting the place would draw visitors, help the local economy and keep it out of private hands.
For about twenty years he led tours up through Bear Valley and into the caves, wrote articles urging that it be preserved, and acted as its unofficial caretaker. People called him the Father of the Pinnacles. When Congress made this a national park in 2013, the same law added about three thousand acres of new wilderness and named it in his honor.
Point 2 · At the stop
Into Bear Gulch
This is Bear Gulch, a narrow canyon in the volcanic rock, with Bear Creek running along its floor. Take a look at the boulders around you and in the creek bed. In these canyons they range from small stones to blocks that weigh thousands of tons, broken from the cliffs above by faults, earthquakes and erosion.
Most of Pinnacles is chaparral, tough shrubs that cover about four-fifths of the park. Along creeks like this one, though, trees such as live oak, California buckeye and gray pine grow, and in summer the deep shade of canyons like this one keeps ferns alive.
Around dusk, listen for western screech-owls near the Bear Gulch Nature Center, just down the canyon from here. Their call is a whistled hoot that gets faster and faster as the bird keeps calling.
History, on the way there
On the way: The tunnel and the cave junction
Now for the people who built so much of what you're walking on. In 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps came to Pinnacles. The enrollees were young, single men, eighteen to twenty-five, paid thirty dollars a month, and twenty-five of those dollars went straight home to their families. They lived at Camp Pinnacles, beside Chalone Creek, and got up to a bugle at six thirty.
Until 1942 they built the buildings in Bear Gulch, trails across the park, the dam at the reservoir, and the stairways and bridges that carry hikers through the caves. Early in 1942, in the program's final season, the park's first African American enrollees cut a short tunnel through solid rock on the lower trail in Bear Gulch. That spring the camp closed for good, but people still come here every day to use the trails, roads and buildings those young men left behind.
Point 3 · At the stop
The tunnel and the cave junction
Right here, there are two ways up to the reservoir.
One goes into Bear Gulch Cave. The lower part of the cave is usually open from mid-July to mid-May. The whole cave closes from mid-May to mid-July while the bats raise their young, and the upper part usually opens only for one to four weeks in March and in October. If it's open and you have a flashlight, expect low ceilings, uneven footing and slippery rock, and maybe shallow water. The cave route comes back out onto the Moses Spring Trail below the reservoir.
The other way stays outside on the Moses Spring Trail and passes the spring it's named for, where water seeps straight out of the rock wall. It was found in the early nineteen-twenties by the monument's custodian, Herman Hermansen, and a friend, while they were laying out a trail. The spring was hidden on a shelf in the cliffs under vines and big ferns, and it was the ferns that gave it away. Please don't drink from it, though: the park warns the water may contain natural contaminants.
History, on the way there
On the way: The Monolith
Now for the caves themselves. These aren't caves dissolved out of limestone by water. They're talus caves. Faults and fractures in the volcanic rock opened steep, narrow canyons, and huge boulders fell from the cliffs and jammed between the walls before they reached the bottom. Those wedged boulders became the ceilings. The big rockfalls are thought to have happened during the last ice ages, but the caves still shift: floods wash away the sand and gravel the boulders rest on, and now and then a rock settles or falls.
There's no documented evidence that Native people lived in these caves. But a well-known local legend says the bandit Tiburcio Vásquez, who rustled cattle across central California in the eighteen hundreds and was hanged in San Jose in 1875, hid out in the rocks and caves of Pinnacles. Nobody has proved it, but it remains a favorite local campfire tale.
Point 4 · At the stop
The Monolith
The great block of rock above this part of the canyon is known as the Monolith. Like the crags around it, it's volcanic rock, carved by millions of years of weathering and erosion.
These caves are also home to bats. Fourteen of California's twenty-three bat species live in Pinnacles, and every one of them here eats insects. Bear Gulch Cave shelters a colony of Townsend's big-eared bats, a species California lists as sensitive, and their maternity colony is the largest between San Francisco and Mexico. That's why the whole cave closes each year from mid-May to mid-July, and why the upper cave stays closed most of the year. A gate lets visitors into half of the cave and leaves the rest to the bats. If you do go in, keep your voice low, and please don't use flash photography or shine bright lights where bats are roosting.
History, on the way there
On the way: Bear Gulch Reservoir
Now for the dam and the water behind it. Bear Gulch Dam was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps early in 1935. The last concrete was poured by the end of February, and by the first week of March heavy rains had already filled the reservoir and sent water pouring over the spillway.
Park engineers wanted the trail to cross the top of the dam, so the Corps soon made it taller. When the work was done, the dam stood forty-five feet high and eighty feet wide along the top, and by February of 1937 the reservoir held about forty acre-feet of water, nearly three times as much as before. The bare concrete was then faced with stone quarried from the outcrops around it, so that the dam would blend into the canyon.
Point 5 · At the stop
Bear Gulch Reservoir
This is Bear Gulch Reservoir, one of the most iconic sights in Pinnacles. On a still day the rock formations around it are mirrored in the water, and it's a good spot for lunch, or for watching the sunset.
Look for frogs here, and if you find one, keep your distance. These are California red-legged frogs, a threatened species. They once lived in this reservoir, then disappeared in the early nineteen-eighties, probably because someone had put black bullhead catfish in it to fish for. In 1985 the park drained the reservoir and removed about seventeen hundred pounds of catfish, but the frogs didn't come back on their own. So in 2001, biologists began moving eggs here from nearby streams, raising the young tadpoles in protective pens and then releasing them. By 2004, five egg masses were found in the reservoir, the goal the park had set for success.
It's illegal to harass these frogs, and getting close enough to make one jump counts as harassment, so a pair of binoculars is the best way to see them.
History, on the way there
On the way: Along the rim
Now for the biggest bird you might see from up here. California condors are the largest land birds in North America, with wings that span about nine and a half feet. By the nineteen-eighties only twenty-two were left, and every wild condor was captured for a breeding program. Pinnacles joined the recovery in 2003, releasing its first two captive-bred condors that December, and it's the only national park unit that runs a condor release site. In 2016, a chick fledged from a nest inside the park, the first since 1898.
In the traditions of the Amah Mutsun, the condor escorted the spirits of the dead across the sea to the next world, and in 2011 the tribal band held a ceremony to celebrate the condor's return to Pinnacles. Today the greatest danger to these birds is still lead, from fragments of bullets in the carcasses they feed on.
Point 6 · At the stop
Along the rim
From the Rim Trail you look down into Bear Gulch and across to the crags on the far side, with almost no shade up here.
Cliffs like these are prime nesting ground for birds of prey. More than twenty kinds of raptors have been seen in the park and ten nest here every year, including the highest density of nesting prairie falcons in the country. They raise their young from winter into summer, and that's when some climbing areas are closed to protect them.
If a big dark bird soars overhead, here's how to tell a condor from the far more common turkey vulture. A condor holds its wings flat and steady and doesn't flap much. An adult has a pink and orange head and a white triangle under the front edge of each wing. A turkey vulture is much smaller, holds its wings in a shallow V and rocks from side to side. Every condor also carries a numbered tag on its wing, and if you see one, the park's condor program would like to hear about it.
History, on the way there
On the way: The High Peaks Trail
Now for the people who knew this land first. Native people have lived in what is now California for more than ten thousand years. The park has found no sign of a village inside its boundaries, but this was a place to harvest food, medicine and materials through the year: in spring, perhaps leafy plants, wildflower seeds and bulbs; in fall, acorns and pine nuts. They cared for the land with real skill, by weeding, pruning, sowing seed, and setting fires at carefully chosen times and places to keep brush from crowding out the grasslands.
That way of life was devastated after the Spanish arrived in 1769. The mission closest to Pinnacles was founded at Soledad in 1791, and disease and the harsh changes of mission life killed many of the Chalon and Mutsun people. Much of their knowledge had been passed down by word of mouth, and much of it was lost. Today, tribal members are working with the park to bring back the old ways of caring for its plants.
Point 7 · At the stop
The High Peaks Trail
This is the High Peaks Trail. Higher up, it climbs to the High Peaks, where the early morning and the evening are some of the best times to see condors. It's a strenuous climb, so save it for a day with plenty of water.
The low, tough shrubs around you are chaparral. The most common is chamise, with tiny needle-like leaves and spikes of white flowers from May through July. Many chaparral plants are made for fire: some seeds lie in the soil for years and only sprout after a burn.
That's the last story on this walk. Since 1908 this place has grown from a small monument into a national park of about twenty-six thousand acres, and it's still changing, with boulders falling, frogs returning and condors nesting here again. Thank you for walking Bear Gulch with me today, and enjoy the rest of your time at Pinnacles.