Tuesday, March 26 Barstow, California
Yesterday I awoke to clear skies and cool
temperatures, got some coffee going and, after a bit of warm up, got myself on
the trail again. I decided to walk to
the Balconies and back, a round trip of about five mostly level miles. I have so much history and so much
familiarity with this place that just about anywhere in the park, I feel
comfortable and welcome. I parked at the
trailhead, grabbed my cameras and trusty walking stick, and began walking the
trail that was once the road to “Old Pinnacles”. I remembered a time back in 1964 when Stan
and I drove this road on January 1 and camped at the base of the
Balconies. It was bitter cold and no one
else was crazy enough to be camping there.
We spent the night sleeping in his parents’ old Ford.
The trail as it is now pretty much follows the
south fork of Chalone Creek which is currently flowing with fresh, clear
water. I took my time ambling along,
stopping to photograph wildflowers as I came upon them….shooting stars, a
chaparral nightshade, milkmaids. I
passed the former site of the Chalone Creek Campground, closed many years ago
and now just a part of the natural creekbed.
This is the spot where I took LSD for the very first time back in
December of 1967. Why we persisted in
visiting the park in the dead of winter, I will never know. But I do recall that, with rain imminent that
day, we (Jim, Stan, Steve and I) all high tailed it over to Santa Cruz taking
refuge in a friend’s crash pad. There,
as I came down from my acid trip, we listened to Jefferson Airplane’s latest
LP, After Bathing At Baxters, and the music absolutely transported me to
another place. Still one of my favorite
records to this day.
In any case, the walk was near perfect as the
trail crossed the shallow creek several times, wove through little forested
groves of buckeye and blue oak, and across sunny stretches of chaparral. Eventually I caught sight of the huge massif
called the Balconies, an enormous chunk of rhyolitic stone rising above the
canyon. The Balconies Caves were closed
due to high water but I walked as far as I could to where an iron gate blocked
my path. Beyond the gate I could hear
the roar of falling water coming out of the dappled darkness. A few minutes later, as I started back, I
found an old log to sit on where I could snack on an apple and some dried
venison. Above me loomed the towering
Machete Ridge, another major landmark of the area. One could call it the El Capitan of
Pinnacles.
The return trip seemed to go quickly and I was
back at the campground by 2pm. I spent
the rest of the afternoon reading and relaxing in the sun, watching turkey
vultures soar on afternoon updrafts and California quail scurrying from one
bush to the next. When I woke up this
morning the sky was overcast and threatening rain. So I packed up hastily and began what was
basically my return trip home. The
highway beyond the park wound through velvety green hills of the Gabilan Range,
then turned east over the more rugged southern Diablos toward Coalinga. After that it was the long and boring drive
south on Interstate 5 through the arid and empty landscape of the western San
Joaquin Valley. Then up and over the
Tehachapis at Arvin before dropping into the true desert at Mojave. Exactly 300 miles from my campsite at
Pinnacles to the Hotel 6 in downtown Barstow.
The beginning of the end.
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