The first time I drove in to the west side of Pinnacles National Monument, I looked up at the High Peaks and wondered with awe at what they must be like close-up. As it happens, there are some very nice trails you can hike to take a tour through them. Later on, Brad Young's excellent guidebook tempted me with climbing routes.

Around the same time as this trip report, a couple of local guys had an epic in that area, on Condor Crag. The route was a four-pitch 5.8 called Condor Condiment.

Skip to the present day, the one just before Halloween -- I'd just met Noal at a local gym, and we decided to do a get-acquainted climb at the Pinns. Condor Condiment sounded excellent, and there were some nice beta shots in a thread at the Masters Of Mud site, which is frequented by a certain guidebook author :)

We started early, hiking up from the Bear Gulch parking lot. It promised to be a warm day, and despite temps in the balmy 40's we saw a couple swathed in down gear heading for the Discovery Wall. The High Peaks trail switchbacks up about 1200' in 2 miles to an overlook, with nice views along the way and some interesting-looking formations.



It's less than a half mile from there to Condor Crag. There are occasional railings, with steps cut into the volcanic rock.


Imagine if they did this to Half Dome :) Oh wait ..

Anyway, we passed Long's Folly, which has a few nice routes on it.


Soon we came to our descent route -


We continued walking along the trail, down the steps and then about 50-100' down the trail towards the Sponge, turning left to contour down along the north side of Condor Crag. I hoped we might find a well-worn path, but it was a bushwhack. Not horrendous mind you, just enough to keep us honest. There was a little scrambling, and finally we found a flattish clearing, looked up and saw the route.


I took the first pitch, which had nine bolts. Some of them were more confidence-inspiring than others, and I ended up clipping about seven of them. It was a fun warmup and fairly long pitch for Pinnacles, about 50m to 2-bolt belay.



Next pitch was Noal's, and I think he got the best one.


It traverses left past a bolt, then up through an area of holes suitable for cams and tricams, including a monster pocket that fit a #4 camalot. Then there is another traverse left with thrilling exposure. 30m to 2-bolt belay.


I headed up the third pitch, past a bolt and some more holes. I traversed left a bit, placed one of the larger master cams and maybe another, then clipped a bolt. From here I headed up to the ridge crest into the sunshine, passing another bolt. 30m to a single bolt, augmented by gear (cam and nut).



It was getting pretty warm in the sun. Most of the route had been in the shade of the formation's north face, and I was happy we'd gotten on it at the end of the dry season -- the lichen and moss probably gives the route a whole other character during the wet season (though it is probably closed for raptor nesting from late January until summer).

Noal took the last 60m to the summit, which was mostly fourth class or easier. There was one funky traverse / downclimb though .. not sure we were on route, but it was fun and it got us to where we were going.





We took stupid summit photos and then set up our rappel.


There are actually two intermediate rap stations to get back down to the High Peaks trail. We should have used the first one we came to, near the tree. As it was, we continued down to the second one at the chockstone. From there the rope was impossible to pull. Before I could get out my prusiks, Noal soloed up an easy chimney to the first rap station and started pulling. Soon we were back down, and we thrashed our way back through the brush to retrieve our lunch. Yum.

It was early afternoon, and temps were definitely in the 80's (F). Noal came up with the idea of checking out The Fault Zone, which held the promise of a "perfect hand crack", something I'd rarely seen at Pinnacles. We backtracked to Long's Folly and headed down a deer trail, wandered through high grass and wondered where the hell we were. The day was getting a little warm, and I was thinking about a nice siesta ...

But suddenly we realized it was right in front of our noses.


Just a little ways to the right we found our hand crack -


The north-facing shade was very welcome, and I taped my knuckles (the rock was sharp and knobby inside) & started up .. delicious. Near the end of the 70' crack it narrowed to fingers, and then flattened out to a slab. After 50' of easy but unprotected lichen/knobs there was a 2-bolt belay. There is supposed to be another bolt somewhere on the route, but I didn't see it, oh well.


Noal took the second pitch; fourth/easy fifth on knobs and a water chute, ending up at a 1-bolt belay, literally steps away from the High Peaks trail.

Oh yeah, a satisfying end to a nice day. We packed up and headed back down the trail to merge into the Discovery Wall traffic jam :)