The silhouettes of ghostly desert mountains slowly grew while Natalie and I drove toward Pinnacles National Monument. We spent the day trying to find a surf board in Santa Cruz for her and were now headed to do some climbing with our friend’s Paul and Jen Wheeler.
We arrived at a camp site late Friday night in my old Nissan.
Paul groggily crawled out from his tent. Pretty soon he was wide awake and we were drinking Haywire Hefeweizens. I bought a case of the stuff because it had a climber on the front, a sign of a good beer. It was ok as far as hefe’s go, they won points for the label.
We played Euchre the rest of the night and finally hit the sack in my new truck. Natalie had made curtains for the back windows in the cab so we could sleep comfortably inside. Natalie kept waking up dreaming that she was suffocating, I kept angrily telling her to go back to sleep and that the windows were wide open. I apologized in the morning and made it up to her with some oatmeal and coffee for breakfast.
Paul, Jen, Nat and I hit the trail and headed for Balconies Cave. Our headlamps were pretty dim as we crawled through the little crevices of the dank pitch black corridors. Natalie who is slightly claustrophobic, as I found out in the truck the night before, did quite well. As she looked toward me for comfort in the cave she eventually became accustomed to the darkness and felt her way around the rock, even exploring a little bit.
Soon we found ourselves outside and in the bright sunlight again. Then back through some caves and down a long hallway. With the exception of Paul, we all ducked under massive boulders that had fallen and wedged themselves between the walls. Paul with his lust for peril boulderd over them on the side walls.
Once we were out of the caves we headed to a climbing wall very close to the caves. Paul and I decided to free solo what we thought was an easy climb. It turned out a little more difficult than we thought. Paul went ahead and I turned back.
Eventually we made it to the anchors and set up shop for a good top rope climb overlooking an immense golden cliff.
Later that night we hooked up with our friends James, Shannon, Luna ( James’ dog ) and David who was visiting from Chicago.
After the rest of the ice cold beers that we stashed in a lock box with ice and hay we pulled from around the campsite were drunk we went to bed. The next day we awoke to a day of surfing in Pacifica.
