Pinnacles National Park, east of Salinas and a few hours' drive from Santa Barbara, is a wondrous place to walk amidst pieces of the past. The Pinnacles are huge fortresses of volcanic rock that belonged to the Neenach Volcano near present-day Lancaster before the San Andreas Fault carried the magmatic forms from their desert origin. Millennia of elemental influence eroded the land to reveal the steep spires and ravines standing today. The National Park preserves this slow, many-million-year crawl of rock, situated as it is currently amidst familiar chaparral terrain.
At 26,606 acres, Pinnacles is a small enough park that an avid trekker could view almost its entirety in a day with time to spare. The best way to do it is to connect a few shorter trails to create a large loop, the High Peaks Trail-Balconies Cave Loop, an almost 10-mile excursion that takes you through many of the park's highlights.
Beginning at the Old Pinnacles Trailhead, you stroll an easy mile down the Bench Trail, making friends with the many serpentine rocks studding green the blonde grasses. At 1.4 miles, you begin your gradual ascent to the High Peaks, though there is yet barely a pinnacle in sight. As you switchback between the gray pine and buckeye, gradually climbing almost a thousand feet, you are afforded sweeping and classically Californian views of miles of rolling hills of grass and oak.
