Scout Peak 2651′, The Shaft 2450′, and Punctuation Pinnacle 2572′
Rock Climbing – Pinnacles National Park
Total Time: 8:40
Distance: 4.8 miles
Elevation Gain: 1700′
Crux: 5.10a
Pitches: 5
Routes climbed:
– Leonard-Horsfall Route (5.3) – Scout Peak
– Tracker (5.6 TR) – Scout Peak
– The Shaft (5.10a)
– Andy’s Sunset (5.7) – Punctuation Pinnacle
– Dangling Participle (5.9 TR)- Punctuation Pinnacle
Protection: Small rack, dozen quickdraws, 70 meter rope
Companions: Jason Meade
Trailhead: Moses Spring Trailhead, Pinnacles East Side
Rain had skunked out our planned day of Pinnacles climbing in the fall, and it had been close to a year since I last had the chance to pull on the small pebbles held together with soft mud that I had so come to love. I had a planned day of climbing with a new partner Jason Meade, and it looked like weather would be ruining our plans once more, this time with our sights set on the Valley. But the cold winter storm that brought snow to the Valley floor had already blown through the Central Coast, so although it would be a cold day in Pinnacles, it would at least be a dry one. Leaving Fresno well before dawn, we met on the East Side of the park, my first time back on that side of the park since March 2021. It was about 8 AM when we started up the trail, with cold air in the 30s having sunk in the canyon overnight, and a thin mist rolling over the hills and lower peaks.
We warmed up quickly, hiking uphill and joining the High Peaks trail in under an hour from starting out. Scout Peak, the most prominent summit in the southern sector of the High Peaks and would be our first objective for the day. A faint use trail continued on slabs behind the pit toilet and we followed these up and over a few more slabs and pockets of brush before Scout Peak came into view.
Several established routes lead to the summit of Scout Peak, nothing harder than 5.8, but all with typical dubious Pinnacles protection. Given that the rock was still damp, my plan was to summit via the Leonard-Horsfall Route, rated 5.3 and easily with the most opportunities for protection. From the northeast corner of the peak, we followed a series of grassy ramps around to the southwest corner, an obvious chimney marking the start of the route. After putting on our harnesses and racking up, I started up the chimney, extending a 0.5 cam with two slings in a solid crack outside of the chimney to protect the opening moves.
Deep in the chimney was a recently replaced bolt, always a welcome sight at Pinnacles. With that clipped I was able to face climb the left wall then stem up higher, getting over the lip and following a right trending ramp with a deep crack and excellent opportunities for protection, including a very old piton. With the rock still damp, I sewed up the upper section and topped out below the summit block at a thick holly bush. I pushed through, tagged the highpoint and clipped into the two bolt anchor, extending it due to the significant rope drag through the bush. Jason climbed up to join me and he tagged the high point as well, his first technical summit. The fog was just lifting from the spires of the High Peaks with patchy clouds blanketing the snowy Santa Lucia Mountains, giving the summit an unexpectedly alpine feel for such a small formation.
The rappel anchor was on the northeast corner of the formation, and we belayed each other over to set up the rappel, with plans to top rope Tracker afterwards. I unfortunately had forgotten to scout out the line from the base, and I was unsure of what direction to set the anchor. Hoping (incorrectly) it would be the same line as the rappel chains, we rappelled down the face (Jason’s first on rock) only to realize the line was around the bulge to the south.
It took some work to flip the rope around the bulge with an uncomfortable amount of loose rock raining down before I got it remotely close enough to start up Tracker, rated 5.6. I followed the water groove past the single bolt to a small ledge. One more move on knobs brought me to a higher ledge just below the anchor. I climbed the brittle face back to the anchor, then Jason lowered me down the proper line so he could take his turn on top rope. He climbed the route quickly, and I retrieved our stuff from the base of Leonard-Horsfall while he did his second rap of the day.
It was already 11 AM, the morning having slipped away fast. We ate an early lunch and decided on our next objective, settling on the well named ‘Shaft,’ an 80′ free standing Pinnacle just downhill to the south. Originally an old aid route with a tight bolt ladder, the hardware had been replaced and it was now a very well protected sport climb rated 5.10a, one worth pushing the grade on. We hiked down a ramp near Scout Peak, then followed a fairly brush free ridge to the base of The Shaft, the bolt line partially visible from below.
I only knew of a few climbers to tick the route, and had heard it was a bit of a sandbag, but I still felt it was worth trying. I stick clipped the first bolt and made a fairly high step to get above an overhang, the first crux of the route. It was easy climbing to the second bolt, then some low angled crumbly rock to get me to the third and fourth. There was a second overhang where the route became steeper, and after a short rest I started up to bolt #5. Unfortunately I dropped the rope making the clip and pumped myself trying to recover, grabbing the quickdraw and blowing the onsight. With the onsight lost, I started climbing bolt to bolt, hanging for rests before clipping an old piton and moving onto lower angled rock to the left and joining the arete. It was dirty but easier climbing from there, topping out to two seperate anchors on the small summit. I put Jason on belay and he struggled to get through the lower crux but seemed to do fine on the upper section.
I debated giving the route another go on top rope to see if I could climb it cleanly, but in the interest of time, rappelled through the chains to move on to our next objective, Punctuation Pinnacle a bit higher up the brushy slope. From the summit of The Shaft, I felt like I could link together a series of game trails to take us there directly. In practice, this turned into a short but unpleasant bushwack through stiff head-high brush. We would have been better off retracing our steps past Scout Peak and looping around the other side.
We worked our way to the base of Punctuation Pinnacle, the southern arete featuring Andy’s Sunset, 5.7. A relatively newer climb in the park with reasonable bolt spacing, I offered the lead to Jason who agreed to get on the sharp end.
We were able to stick clip to the second bolt, which was welcome considering the amount of loose rock near the bottom of the climb. Jason carefully worked his way up past 5 bolts to the anchor, putting me on top belay and bringing me up to join him. The anchor for the climb was about 50′ below the actual summit, and I scrambled up to the high point on belay, with another two bolt anchor at the high point for the original 5.1 X route.
I belayed Jason up to tag the high point, then belayed him back down to an intermediate anchor that served as the top of a new 5.9 route. We set up a top rope and rappelled down, finding the start to the first bolt to be the crux, with plenty of loose rock still to be cleaned from the route. We rappelled back to the base, now a little after 3:30 with about 1.5 hours of daylight left. I thought it would be tough to hike over to the Central High Peaks, climb a route and get down before dark. There was a squat nearby spire called Pop Pinnacle, but upon inspection it seemed like it would require some dirty and loose unprotected low fifth class to reach a single high bolt, with a 5.7 one move wonder to the summit. The route had zero stars in the guide and didn’t look particularly appealing, so we decided to pack it in, hiking back to the High Peaks trail and taking off our harnesses on the unofficially named summit of Condor Crags Lookout, a rock slab directly behind the pit toilets. Shouldering our packs, we descended the trail back down to the Moses Spring trailhead, getting back to our cars around 4:30. We struck out on celebratory beers at the camp store and parted ways, Jason heading south to Cambria for the weekend while I drove east back home for a weekend on call.