But the shuttle has been indefinitely shut down, and because the park’s roads are narrow and without shoulders, there’s no roadside parking. Rangers can redirect people to overflow parking areas, and before the pandemic there was a shuttle bus system on the east side of the park. “Expect long lines and delays getting into the park between 9 a.m. But on many Saturdays, Sundays and holidays - and also many weekdays in spring - Pinnacles gets “extremely high visitation,” park management warns. The first is that there’s very little parking - just 125 spots on the west side and 300 on the east side, rangers say.Īrriving on a Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning, I had no problem finding spots. Pinnacles poses at least three big logistical challenges. You said something earlier about straight talk? “Some friends said, ‘You’ve got to see what’s behind Soledad.’ Driving through Soledad, you wouldn’t guess there’s a park behind it.” “Word-of-mouth,” hiker Harry McKaig of Santa Cruz told me about how he ended up here. But it was the busiest January at Pinnacles in at least 40 years. The tentative visitor count for January 2022 - about 900 people per day - would be a pittance at larger, more navigable parks. Meanwhile, the pandemic has nudged many Californians into new outdoor adventures, and Yosemite’s imposition of day-trip reservation requirements last summer prompted many travelers to seek out other parks.Īnyway, even though the park’s features have not notably changed (except that staffing shortages have cut back some services), the upward visitor trend continues. And many nearby cities, including San Jose, Hollister and Paso Robles, have been gaining population. Pinnacles was only promoted to national park status in 2013 (after more than a century as a national monument). But there seem to be a lot of contributing factors. So why is this place only getting busy now? I was thinking a few pilgrims in big, white hats might come around the corner next. I also spied on several deer as they spied on a pair of grounded turkey vultures, which ambled along a trail with their tail feathers fanned out as if awaiting a photo shoot. Whether that was a condor or not, it was a good day, with sightings of many vultures, one eagle and a few woodpeckers. “See the white under the wings?” said the man. They were sure it was a condor and they had a pair of fancy binoculars. All I can say for sure is that I saw many black birds on the lookout for dead things.Īt one point, near Bear Gulch Reservoir, a couple of birders from Bend, Ore., directed my gaze to a soaring black bird straight overhead. #Tough nut to crack crossword clue PatchThe challenge I found is that, with its red-orange head and a patch of white feathers under otherwise black wings, a condor at 200 feet looks a lot like a turkey vulture at 100 feet. My friend Carl got surprised by one on a high trail a few years ago and said it was like being buzzed by a small plane. Now, thanks to 20 years of captive breeding and reintroduction of condors to Pinnacles and other wild places, the global population is close to 500 is tracking more than 90 of the birds in Central California, and it’s common to see them in the skies above Pinnacles. Their wings span up to 9½ feet, and as recently as the 1980s, just 22 of them were known to exist in the world. The condors, the largest wild birds in North America, are what everyone wants to see. While we humans scramble around the ridges and crevices of the park, California condors, turkey vultures, eagles and assorted other raptors ride the breezes all around, some nesting among the highest minarets. Also, the Bear Gulch Reservoir - easily reached from the east side and surrounded by boulders - is a great setting for a trailside snack. But for the rest of us, there are about 30 miles of trails that lead past boulder faces colored with lichen of red, orange, yellow and green. And probably chiroptophobics and ornithophobics also. So, basically, for claustrophobics and acrophobics, this is hell on Earth? Or, as the park service says, it’s “dangerous and challenging due to the inherently weak rock and poor protection.” (Also, some formations are closed annually from January through July to make room for nesting falcons and eagles.) The Pinnacles’ high peaks are mostly volcanic breccia, which is more vulnerable to crumbling, a different sort of challenge. But this is not the sturdy granite of Joshua Tree or Yosemite. The Condor Gulch Trail has similar payoffs - spectacular views and a route that wraps around the rocks. We've arranged the synonyms in length order so that they are easier to find.(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times) Synonyms, crossword answers and other related words for PUZZLEWe hope that the following list of synonyms for the word puzzle will help you to finish your crossword today. PUZZLE 'PUZZLE' is a 6 letter word starting with P and ending with E Crossword clues for 'PUZZLE' Clue
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