Lamont Pinnacles and Bald Eagle Peak

We were feeling ambitious on a long late fall weekend and managed to visit two places I'd been wanting to check out for a while.

The first was the Lamont Pinnacles, which I had been jonesing to visit since camping near Chimney Peak Recreational Area earlier in the year. 

(Interlude: On that early Spring 2021 trip I'd gone out to Long Valley, hiked along the creek to a point just short of where it joins the South Fork of the Kern, and dealt with both ice and many many ticks on the trail. I camped overnight in my still-new-feeling Subaru and ate beans that I reheated in a small cast iron cook pot that I was testing for the first time. It was a mid-pandemic trip that really helped me reset and blow off some steam.)

The Lamont Pinnacles trail was relatively easy to follow, but steep. It was exactly what we needed to feel like we'd accomplished something. We turned around just short of the gully that separates the mountain you're doing most of the hike on from the Pinnacles proper. One of the fun aspects of the hike was that the destination isn't visible from most of it, so it is a real reward when it appears. However, throughout the hike, the views of Canebrake and the valley further are absolutely spectacular.

The next destination we managed to hit was Bald Eagle Peak off Saddle Springs Road. I've been wanting to head up there for a while now, but my previous car wasn't up to the task. The Subaru did great, and I even had a chance to play with X-Mode on the descent, which was fantastic. There's lots of sharp rocks on that road, so I was pretty worried about my stock tires, but didn't actually have any issues. Eagle Peak has a bunch of sport climbing routes on it, so this was technically a climb scouting trip. The trail was pretty easy to follow, though we went out on top of the ridge and returned on a trail on the back of the ridge. We don't know which one is technically the correct one -- we suspect the one on the back. We don't have beta for the routes and they look *hard*, plus the notion of climbing there is complicated by access considerations: the road is closed during wet season, but the location faces South and is probably sweltering during the drier months of the year. Regardless, it's a gorgeous chunk of rock and highly motivating. We'll keep digging for beta.