The day we went to the Pinnacles we had no intention of climbing it! We started off at about 1:30pm and my intent was to locate the path, explore the bottom land a bit and take pictures of local plants.
A big part of the walk was to take pictures of plants and later identify what they were. One of the first I found was the Sego Lily.
We climbed higher and I took pictures of the yucca in bloom. It smelled very nice.
It was around this point we realized we had come at least 1/2 way up the trail to the peak and figured we'd continue on a bit more. Still, I didn't think we would do the whole thing.
I thought I should put up a view shot here. A. is the trailhead near the Arrowhead Shooting Range. B. points out Highway 173 at the "bend" past Rock Camp. C. is approximately where our home is. We never really did figure out exactly where it was. And D. is San Gorgonio.
We continued and found these beautiful yellow flowers. I'm still trying to find out what they are. If you know, tell me please!
And we found another really pretty yucca flower stalk.
I sort of thought we had arrived at the peak. But it was just a first one. Beyond it was another small peak and then a much higher peak. I took a picture of this interesting looking deadwood at the first "false peak".
At about this point, we figured we would continue on to the very peak, even though we had not set out to do so on this particular day. We were only about 1/2 a mile from the top. We would reach the peak at 4pm after having set out at 1pm. It was 3.5 miles to the peak with a 1000 ft gain. We arrived at the peak and our breath was taken away with the views. We could see the desert, the mountains, the snow, Silverwood Lake, Strawberry Peak fire lookout, and so on. We watched butterflies chasing each other up in the sky. Lady bugs were every where. It was so pretty there.
It was getting late and I was worried about running into rattlesnakes on the trail. The day was getting cooler and dimmer. So we rested only about 30 minutes before heading on back down. We saw no snakes btw. The return 3.5 miles took us about 90 minutes. Half the time it took to get up.
We promised each other to return soon. Which we did on June 13th with some friends.
