I remind myself about the ground up ethic of the Pinnacles as I stand on top of the balconies. I’m looking for bolts that can make it possible to rap down to a previous high point I’d previously made it to on one of the Pinnacles infamous aid routes. From the top, I can see why it has a ground up ethic, multitudes of broken chunks of rock, fractured and connected to the conglomerate mud by fault lines and dust. Better to start from the ground without knowing about the shooting gallery waiting above.
I return to the Pinnacles year after year, shared with the Condors scratching their way back from oblivion through generations of lead bullets and half-eaten plastic trash fed to them by their parents. We have joint custody. The autumn and winter are mine and the spring and summer belong to them. It is much like every long distance relationship that I have had; the distance is not what matters, it’s always the effect of time. You forget inches, lose the casual comfort, have to regain trust.
Moving across the face of the rock, bits and pieces crumble beneath the pressure of a finger and foot, flex at the opposing gaston of a weighted cam, collapse beneath the bullet holes left behind by hooks. So much so that when encased in aiders on seldom traveled aid routes, you cease to yell rock to your cowering belayer below, instead you agree upon yelling time spans down that rock and dust and mud rain down with whistling doppler shwooshes. I yell “30 seconds” every time I bring my ladder up from a previous piece; the bumbling steps grazing the surface of the rock and acting like a pumice stone on a teenager’s face.
These spires, rising into the sky, make the same images I remember from my youth when I came here with my father to hike over the top between east and west instead of through the caves. Broken fingers and deformed hands, fragile like all things we hold long term relationships with. I remember to treat the place like a lover, waiting through the times when she rains pots and pans down upon me for perceived injustices. Against the sunsets pushing the sun down over Soldedad, the solitude within that name finds me on the west side, knowing that one of the best parts of loving a crazy person is the moments when everyone else has packed it in, disgusted with her volatility and unpredictability, leaving you to hike back down the trail, loose rocks and spilling mud laying a dusty carpet in front of you.
