Pinnacles National Monument

One weekend during my stay at San Jose recently, Yvonne and I and two of Yvonne's friends visited the Pinnacles National Monument. Pinnacles is about 1.5 hours drive, south of San Jose. We started the day with a breakfast at the nearby city of Campbell, at a restaurant called Stacks.

I forgot about how big American portions are and I decided to order the full stack of pancakes which was three pancakes instead of two for the half stack. When the pancakes arrived, I had the biggest shock of that day - each pancake was the size of a small pizza ! Though the pancakes were very yummy, it was impossible for to finish it.

From Campbell, we drove south towards the Garlic Capital, Gilroy, before turning east towards Pinnacles. We arrived at the park shortly before mid-day. We had to park our car at the visitor centre and we took a shuttle inside the park due to the limited car parking spaces inside the park.

Pinnacles is a huge national park and is the site of an ancient extinct volcano. For this trip, we decided to visit the west side of the park as it is closest to San Jose. In particular, we were keen to check out the caves. From the shuttle drop off point, we started on the Moses Spring / Rim Trail.


The trail we took was a relatively easy trail and before long (much earlier than I had expected), we arrived at the Bear Gulch Cave. This cave is quite a unique cave, and is called a "talus" cave. Such caves not formed through the erosion of rock but are effectively enclosed by fallen boulders.

GPS map of our hike :

It was quite a warm day that day but as soon as we entered the cave, the temperature dropped dramatically. We were all wearing summer clothing, not expecting it to be so cool inside the cave. But our excitement at seeing this amazing cave distracted us from any discomfort we felt from the cool temperature.

It's difficult to describe the caves, it's best to take a look at the video I posted earlier. The caves were very dark in places but in other parts, light fell through the gaps in the boulders and created a very surreal environment. We continued on the trail which took us up the mountain, inside the cave. We eventually emerged into sunlight again and we saw an amazing sight.

We arrived at the Bear Gulch Reservoir which is a large reservoir halfway up the mountain. The view here was great and we stopped her to rest and take lots of photos.

Bear Gulch Reservoir :

From the reservoir we continued to climb on the Rim Trail to the top of this section of the mountain. The rock formations on this mountain are so interesting and we stopped regularly for lots of photo opportunities. There was one particular large rock that I wanted to climb on to take photos and I had to coax Yvonne to climb up as she's a little afraid of heights. After the photo, she was the first to get off the rock !


We finished the hike a lot earlier than we have expected. We wrapped up by 2.30pm and took the opportunity to rest and have a late lunch. I thoroughly enjoyed this hike and would love to go back. One thing I forgot to mention, apparently this region is famous for tarantula spiders !! Luckily for me, we didn't see any on the day. I'm not a big fan of creepy crawlies.

See : Photos | Flickr Photos