Hey folks! Thanks again with your help earlier last week with suggestions on where my group might look for top ropeable climbing at Pinnacles. We had a blast.
Three of the five of us drove in Friday night late (it was pitch dark) and slept at the campground. I don't even have a tent, so I folded down seats in the back of the Subaru and crawled into my sleeping bag. It was COLD. Pretty sure it got down to freezing. I tried not to be a wimp about it, but it wasn't the most fun.
We woke up around 6:30am, ate some breakfast, met our last two folks who drove down that morning really early, and got into the park about 8:15ish. That parking lot fills up fast, let me tell you. We hiked in and, since there were only four others on when we got there, set up on Tourist Trap. We were debating how best to access some anchors, when the guy who'd just finished leading Rat Race offered to lead Wee Little Ones and put up our anchor. He did, and we got after it as a warmup. A fun, if straightforward slab. One of us stayed tied in after climbing it and walked/climbed over to put a rope and anchor on Angstroms Away. This proved harder, and a bit more fun to unlock for several of us. Ultimately, standing up hard on a high foot did the trick.
After everyone had spent some time on these Trap was filling up, so we opted to venture further in and see what we could find. We were one part just looking to see what was where, one part headed toward The Upper Crust as had been suggested here. We hiked through the Bear Gulch Caves (which I didn't know existed and was admittedly a highlight), practically fighting off tourists, including one guy who didn't seem to understand that just shouting "coming down" to the line of folks coming through the hands and knees squeeze wasn't going to help. The internet has just told me this cave hosts a maternity colony of Townsend's Big Eared Bats! I love them!
We got out, up to the reservoir, and sat to have some food and water. There were a fair number of people out, but it seemed like most of them were hikers or simply tourists, with some folks at Trap, a bit of activity on Discovery Wall, some on Monolith, and a couple folks on Tiburico's X. We crossed the dam, took a minute to figure out the climbers' access trail, and headed toward Upper Crust. Nobody was there. It was great. A couple folks headed up the 2nd/3rd class chimney near the far upper side to try and access anchors. They were successful, but found both the chimney and the top of the crag pretty sketchy. I didn't do this part myself, so I take them at their word. We worked primarily on Sound Chaser here, which was the best climbing of the trip in my opinion. We worked out beta with each other, found good holds, and most of us sent. Our other rope ended up on Relayer, which everyone found rather frustrating. It's likely that it was just harder than our group was prepared to do, but that was that. In general, we found the grades in the park hard relative to our outdoor experience, but not in a way I'd characterize as sandbagged.
Once we'd all worked though Sound Chaser and beaten ourselves down on Relayer, we packed up and started heading back to the campground. It was already probably 4:30, and since the number of people in the park had dwindled, we made good time getting out to avoid having to do it in the dark. We did get back too late to get firewood from the camp store, which wasn't the best, but again I seemed the most bothered by this. The night was, if anything, colder this time around, but I was a little more sure of how to adjust my setup for comfort, and a lot more tired than the previous night.
We packed up the next morning and made our way into the park a touch later than before, probably by 9am. Having gotten some of the lay of the land, and a better ability to match what was in the guide book with the real world, we headed up the Rim Trail this time to hit Teaching Rock, with the possibility of trying to find something we could set a TR up off of Discovery Wall after. I lead the group up onto the Rim Trail having kinda figured out how things were laid out yesterday. We got through some gorgeous hiking, past Ignorable Cliffs, The Heffalump, etc. until it was right there. We got up, set up some anchors, and had a fun several hours. There's a great belay station built at the bottom of Teaching Right (looked new-ish), and Teaching Center wasn't hard, but was fun, with the crux involving getting up over a baby-sized headwall kinda form. All of us found hands and a good left foot for that one in order to launch into the beached whale move. We spent a good bit of time here since we had the place to ourselves (strangely), and even used Teaching Right for teaching! But in this case it was rappel practice. The climb was a ladder.
Two of us headed out at this point. One of them had been skiing in Tahoe for something like four days prior to this and was feeling super wiped. The rest of us investigated Discovery, but my safety-minded cohort didn't find a line that seemed acceptable to drop a rope for without a lot of left-right swing potential (Swallow Crack was kinda the target. My friend felt too sketched out about it). We did find several sets of bolts up top, so I know where those are now, and found folks down bottom on Forty Days of Rain and Ordeal, as well as great views into Bear Gulch, so I don't regret the extra hiking one bit.
Over all, I'll definitely be back. 3 hours including traffic isn't a bad trip at all for me from the East Bay, especially if I'm staying overnight. I will probably be a wimp about it when it's this cold in the future and stay in Hollister or somewhere, but what can you do? I found the rock type very interesting, producing great holds and garbage in equal measure, though maybe my opinion will change if/when I ever have something pop out on me. There's just so much great stuff here, even in the really easy to access areas that I have to come back, and the park is just beautiful all on its own, ignoring the climbing. I've got my lead class at my gym next Friday evening, so hopefully, I'll have a few more options open to me the next time I visit.
