A light mist sprinkled from the iron-grey skies as I stood
alongside the fire-watch tower on North Chalone Peak. At 3,304
feet, this rounded summit is the highest point at the Pinnacles
National Monument, a wilderness park located about 25 miles south
of Hollister.
A light mist sprinkled from the iron-grey skies as I stood alongside the fire-watch tower on North Chalone Peak. At 3,304 feet, this rounded summit is the highest point at the Pinnacles National Monument, a wilderness park located about 25 miles south of Hollister.
The afternoon sun managed to break through the clouds, creating a kaleidoscopic rainbow over the rugged terrain. One end of the rainbow came down on the needle-like spires of the rock formations that give the park its name. And, at that moment, my mind wandered back 23 million years ago – a geologic blink of the eye – when a cataclysmic drama took place here. That drama was fueled by the inferno of inner Earth.
The age of the dinosaurs had ended more than 40 million years ago, and human beings would not emerge out of Africa for 21 million more years. The San Andreas Rift Zone was being formed as the Pacific Plate collided slowly into the North American Plate.
Living in earthquake country, most Californians are familiar with the concept of plate tectonics. It’s the concept that the Earth’s surface is made up of a patchwork of land masses called “plates.” These plates,
pushed along by the pressure of magma (liquefied rock) far below the earth’s surface, rub against each other along the seams. Sometimes, the pressure builds up so much that the faults vent the pent-up energy as earthquakes.
Occasionally, along these fault zones, the Earth’s crust is broken, magma spills out onto the surface, and volcanos grow to tower above the landscape.
That’s how the Pinnacles were created 23 million years ago. At that time, south of the present-day Pinnacles near what is now the California community of Gorman, the surface broke open and the molten rock erupted out of the ground. The explosions of rock grew in intensity and layer upon layer, the cone of the steep-sided volcano formed. It grew very high. Some geologists estimate this formation stood a mile higher than present-day North Chalone Peak.
As I stood on the peak that rainy December afternoon, I tried to imagine the forces creating the volcano. The glowing-hot molten lava pouring out from the earth. The steam from the intense heat rising into the sky. The smell of sulpher fumes. The rumble of the explosions shaking the air and pre-historic terrain.
Certainly exotic creatures – versions of camels, mammoth, saber-tooth tigers and other species long extinct – looked at that growing volcano with fear.
From North Chalone Peak, I looked up at the clouds and imagined the top of that mile-high volcano touching them.
Nothing in geology and biology stays the same – that’s the unbreakable rule of nature. Life and the land are always in transformation. With the forces of inner earth still acting on it, the Pacific Plate slowly crept
north along the North American Plate, dividing the remains of the volcano into two sections.
In the south, the original site of the volcano still remains. It is known as the Neenach Formation. The Pinnacles of today exist north of that location. The mile-high volcano has been worn down by the forces of weather. Millions of years of raindrops plopping on the rock have pounded it into soil like so many tiny hammer blows in the process of erosion. These countless raindrops have carved the land and broken the soil to be carried away by the creeks to create the fertile farmland of south San Benito County and the Salinas Valley.
The present Pinnacles formation is about a third the size of the great volcano that once stood here. But it is no less spectacular, I’m sure. With the rain falling down on the landscape that December afternoon, I
realized the process was not over. Millions of years from now, the mountain I stood on will be washed away by wave after wave of storm fronts coming in from the Pacific Ocean.
Perhaps every century, I estimated, a foot of height would be washed off this mountain. About 3.5 million years from now, North Chalone Peak would be ground down to a flat plain.
As I hiked down the trail from North Chalone Peak, I passed by rain-filled streams dashing along rocks and boulders. How innocent these waterways seemed, but they were forces of great change. The trail passed
through the spires and crags of hard rock boulders, some of them covered with day-glow colored moss carpeting. Those rocks were once in the heart of the earth, molten magma much too hot for any vegetation to ever grow on.
At the reservoir just above the Bear Gulch Caves, I passed a family who had stopped to rest on the dam that held back the reservoirs. They had two small boys who were throwing rocks and stones into the water. What story could those rocks tell? Now they were used as playthings by a couple of children. Those rocks were toys 23 million years old.
It’s all part of the Pinnacles story. The human element of that story is a very tiny portion. On Jan. 16, 1908, President Teddy Roosevelt signed a bill preserving Pinnacles National Monument for its geologic
and recreational value. Its distinct rock formations and caves have long drawn visitors to the park.
From 1933 to 1942, the Civilian Conservation Corps (formed by President Franklin Roosevelt to provide jobs during the Great Depression) developed trails and facilities in the Pinnacles. And in 1976, Congress
passed legislation protecting the park as a wilderness legacy for future generations.
And who would come along this way 3.5 million years from now when the landscape would not be so rugged, I wondered.
My imagination played with the idea of some future rancher raising genetically-enhanced cattle standing on this ground, little suspecting that a volcanic mountain had once stood above him. Or perhaps, a massive metropolis would cover the site – the more likely scenario.
That’s the lesson of the Pinnacles. Life and the land never stay the same. Life and the land are always in transition.
