Pinnacles National Park - part 2

On Friday, after our first hike on Condor Gulch Trail to the overlook (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2022/04/pinnacles-national-park-part-1.html), we decided to drive to the end of the road and, if there was a parking spot available, do the other trail we had been interested in doing...

Moses Spring - Rim Trail Loop (2.2 mi loop, 1.5 hours, elevation change 500 ft): Moderate. This loop is a good choice for rock formations, talus caves, and the reservoir on a short hike and also a good choice for children. Bear Gulch Cave is open seasonally. Flashlight required in cave.

We had prepared by bringing flashlights, and, you probably have already figured out, there was a parking spot, just *one* parking spot available when we got to the parking lot (and immediately after we took it, 2-3 other cars circled through looking for a spot).

Map at the trailhead. The dotted part is through the cave -- we could stay on the Moses Spring Trail and skip the cave, but we were interested in seeing the cave.

Informational sign at the trailhead

The sun had come out and the trail was lush and green.

A ground squirrel was posing (eating) on a small branch next to the trail...

He wasn't scared of us at all...

Unlike ones we encountered at Zion National Park last year (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2021/05/tuesday-to-zion-part-1.html), these did not seem to think that humans should feed them.

When we got to this opening, we thought this was the beginning of the cave...

... but we didn't need flashlights... hmm... that wasn't what we were expecting!

Oh, this must be the cave we were expecting!

Brilliant green moss on the rocks at the entrance. We got around the big puddle of water and entered the cave...

A little past the entrance -- in places there were holes through which light entered the cave.

You might recall from the description of the trail, it indicated "talus caves" -- in case you don't know offhand what that means (I didn't), here's a quote from Encyclopedia Brittannica:

Talus caves are openings formed between boulders piled up on mountain slopes. Most of them are very small both in length and in cross section. Some boulder piles, however, do have explorable interconnected “passages” of considerable length. (https://www.britannica.com/science/talus-cave)

Sure enough, there were boulders piled up!

Sometimes the passage was rather narrow, and sometimes the ceiling was quite low.

It may be hard to distinguish but we came to an area where steps were carved and there were metal railings.

We were all by ourselves the whole time we were in the cave (probably about 10 minutes) so we could hear the water of the stream running through the cave:

At the end of the cave, there was a particularly low passage that required either very low stooping or crawling (Carl has his light in his hand that is providing the light on the rock next to him).

When we got out, we had a beautiful sunshiny view of the rocks that made up the top of the talus cave that we had just traversed.

We still had more of a hike, but that's a story for another blog post!