Day 9: Pinnacles National Park

Sunday
Very early morning sight : a cloudy sky, the moon dim behind a haze. I rose later and had a refreshing sponge bath in the loo. Tea made, I sat at the picnic table huddled in the down jacket that seemed so out of place when I first landed in CA, but which has been perfect for early mornings.

I played again with the new binoculars, watching trees and bushes around my campsite, practicing long and short focus. I had good views of the steller's jays and for one exciting moment spotted an orange, white and black bird I'll call an oriole until I learn different. I had plenty of views of the boys in their unceasing play as they crossed my sightline. Occasionally parents could be heard urging: "Come back & finish your milk," or "Rest your legs for the day's hike." Adults forget the way energy is generated by its expense. I heard a mother telling one to come play closer to the family campsite, but the crowd was undiminished. They seemed a happy lot.

I went over to the entrance station to see if I could register again for tonight, and had another wait until they opened for the day. If the cool and overcast conditions continued, it would ease the water equation a bit on my hike. They opened and I was indeed able to get another night there: on Sundays the crowd in the park thins out. With the senior pass, the tent site is a mere $11.50 a night.

The temperature was predicted to rise up to yesterday's levels, but it was still cool as I started out. The hike I'd chosen, the Condor Gulch/High Peaks loop, was  5.3 miles long and went up to the Pinnacles peaks and circled back through steep, narrow terrain that would be fully exposed to the afternoon sun. My water supply added up to 2 liters, which theoretically would last only 2 hours. If the cool of the morning lasted, it might work, but I had reservations and stayed watchful as I climbed and drank and recalculated.

After about 45 minutes it got sunny and warmer and finally just plain hot.

The weirdness of volcanic rock forms.

Olmec terracotta figure 1000-800 A.D.

The shapes of the volcanic forms were weird and wonderful, very much alive. Every few feet another aspect suggested new animals or human forms. Like many of my fellow hikers I had hopes of spotting a condor up in these peaks. Twice as I stood gazing through the binoculars people passing by asked, hopefully, if I'd seen one. One hiker reported that he'd heard that a pair had been spotted on the far side of the High Peaks loop. For a few breathless moments I thought I was seeing them myself, circling around overhead. I could see the narrow triangles of light coloring underneath that would be present in adult condors, but this turned out to be an illusion caused by reflections from the shiny feathers of a couple of ravens.

A few times I passed couples and even small families who appeared to be sharing very small supplies of water. I saw some who were carrying nothing. Was this possible? Had they been airlifted into place and were strolling downhill for a drink? I later read about some sobering cases of dehydration in various western parks when hikers did not take precautions.

In the end I cut short my own hike, just to be on the safe side. I backtracked the way I'd come and arrived at the trailhead with water left over. I had been out for 3 hours or so, covering around 4.6 miles. It was disappointing to miss the view of the Balconies and the challenge of that steep narrow trail on the western side of the loop. I could probably have done the whole High Peaks loop, as my actual consumption came to only 1/2 liter per hour, but thinking about it constantly had impinged on my fun, and I'll pack more water next time, just for the peace of mind.

After some replenishment and a wet towel treatment for my head, I meandered over to the nature center to see what I could learn. This turned out to be memorable. The tall ranger there, PT, was friendly, bright, and generous with interesting lore. I wondered if the small snaky tree with the glowing red skin was manzanita. Yes, it was. And the red layer was an outer layer, not an inner layer exposed by injury. Then he asked if I had touched it (No). "Well, try touching it next time -- in fact,  touch your cheek to it -- and feel how silky it is."  He felt like kin when he said that.

I hung around longer, alternately reading posters and listening to his teaching as others came in with their questions. He had an engaging manner as he spoke to a father with two young daughters, and from their conversation I learned about granary pines:

When I saw this at another park, I now knew what it was.  Woodpeckers carve the niches and store acorns in them to ripen. This also supports insect life in the tree and the drilling helps decompose the tree back into its constituent atoms and molecules.

There was a new zing of energy as PT suddenly recognized someone who had entered the door and called out a greeting. As he was still in midstream, he signaled to the newcomer to hold on a moment while he finished his narrative. A moment later the man came into my view and the two hugged each other and out tumbled their stories. The newcomer, HL, had met PT in Denali National Park where PT was stationed just prior to taking the job here in Pinnacles. HL is a great hiker, loves Denali, and they had struck acquaintance over their shared enjoyment of nature and the outdoors. They carried on for a bit, catching up.

HL has been living and roving for 2 years in a Toyota RAV4, which he loves; PT landed a permanent position at Pinnacles this year and has some high rank in the park though I don't know his title. At a pause, I asked PT if he knew NJ and it turned out both of them know her and know of her involvement with the Wolf Seminar offered by the Murie Science and Learning Center at Denali. I told them my daughter and I had taken that seminar in 2013 to learn more about Adolph Murie's wolf studies in the park. I explained our family connection to Adolph (my great uncle) and his naturalist brother Olaus (my grandfather). They both seemed really pleased with this connection to someone on the pro-wolf side of things.  HL : "I've got to shake your hand --- this is like shaking hands with Willie Mays!"

It was fun to share this bond, but the wolf news from Denali is not good. Population has been sorely  diminished in the last few years. Global warming means mild winters, so the wolf's prey species do not weaken as they normally would. The snowshoe rabbit population is likewise affected by global warming: they are too easy to catch when their white fur stands out against snow-free ground. So they've been over-preyed, leaving fewer to reproduce to maintain a food supply for their predators.

Hunting wolves outside the park is legal, so if one of the Denali band crosses the boundary it is at risk. This leads to some truly criminal acts (my term). Dead carcasses positioned just outside the park boundary lure the wolves into traps. One hunter rode his horse to a point outside the boundary, dismounted and shot the horse. He then set traps all around. Attracted to the smell of the dead animal, along came two members of one of the Denali packs and snap! they were caught in the steel jaws. No one knows how long it took them to die.  One was an alpha female who was thought by most observers to be pregnant, so unborn pups very likely died with her.

The wolf question is a hot topic in Alaska. Many, though not all, hunters believe the way to keep up the supply of game animals is by killing off the predators. (They distinguish between animal and human predators, feeling it's the animals who have to go, not their buddies in safety orange). A buffer zone around the park has been declared, rescinded and argued over since 2002. When in place, it makes it illegal to kill wolves within a set zone just outside the Denali park boundary. Currently the Alaska Game Board has abolished the zone and declared they don't want to hear any more about it until 2017. The controversy is by no means settled, however.

The conversation in the nature center at Pinnacles took an interesting turn toward condors, but before we left the wolves altogether, PT said to me: "Be very proud of your Murie heritage and know that there are still fierce advocates who will shed blood, sweat, tears --- whatever it takes ---  to defend the wolves of Denali." This gives me the shivers still. I know the voices of Adolph and of Olaus, and can hear them in my mind's ear. I know their careful patient words, never spoken or written in haste, nor exaggerated. They built and treasured their own integrity as scientists seeking to find the truth, whichever study they were embarked on --- elk, coyotes, wolves, grizzlies. The voices of careful thought and patient observation and carefully drawn conclusions can be shouted down when the other contenders in the debate disdain the slow, the ponderous, the evidence-based and the modest. Speed and tumult are seductive and so is Lordship -- the belief in our entitlement to all that can be harvested or wrenched from this earth.

Condors, then:
Pinnacles is a major rehab and release site for California condors who've been injured or ill. A major hazard for them is poisoning from lead, which they ingest in two main ways: directly by eating carrion that has lead fragments from bullets or shotgun pellets, or second-hand by eating animals who have fed on other gunshot victims. In a long-lived creature like the condor, lead accumulation over years can rise to deadly levels. Creatures with shorter life-spans are not affected because they normally die of other causes before the lead levels build up.  The rehab solution is to slowly feed a form of calcium that replaces the lead that has been deposited in the bird's tissues. It's a costly program to maintain, but total extinction would be painful beyond measure.

One strategy the park uses to support the rehab mission is to spread information about copper-based ammunition as a better choice. The Park sends personnel to give talks at hunting clubs and other venues, where they demonstrate the types available, let the hunters try it out and send them home with free samples to encourage change.

The rehab center is hidden in the park somewhere, along with a condor school where birds who are injured beyond self-sufficiency spend their lives. Because a condor only lays an egg every ten years, the survival of that chick is critical. When an egg is discovered it is carefully stolen from the bird and replaced with a dummy. The real egg is transported back to an incubation site where it can be kept safe until it hatches. At some point it is turned over to the real authorities, the adult mentor birds, who teach it how to be a condor.  More good details here: http://www.nps.gov/pinn/learn/nature/condors.htm

Now it was time to take another hike, look for condors, clear the brain! After another round of handshakes, we all parted ways and I went off to water up for another foray, this time up Bear Gulch Cave Trail.

I had no flashlight for traversing the caves so I turned back after an hour or so, enjoying the late afternoon sunlight and all around me rocks, rocks and more rocks.

Back at my campsite as I was eating dinner I had a brief visit from HL, whose campsite was nearby. He saw that I had my notebook out and was doing some writing, so he did not stay long. We exchanged email addresses as a way to continue the conversation and he left, promising a story "some other time" to explain how his name got its spelling.

I'd had a great day and was tempted to stay on to hike again, perhaps to do the entire Condor Gulch/High Peaks loop, perhaps to try a new trail. However, the wanderlust had taken hold again and I decided I'd be off in the morning to see what lay further north along Highway 101.