Pinnacles—The Citadel
Climb Review
I have climbed in Pinnacles before and the rock conditions were similar. Having said that though, I felt that the rock was better quality than at Machete Ridge, where there were many holds falling apart—at the Citadel, no holds broke for me.
There was another party below us, but we did not see a ton of rock climbers in Pinnacles on this day.
Costanoan (5.4; Citadel)—When I first dreamed about doing this climb, I was always so worried about the R rating of this climb. That the second bolt would be 50’ up in the air and that if I were to slip, I’d deck and bad things would happen. Well, when I was up there, I realized how easy the route was and how stellar the quality of the rock was—unlike the rotten rocks on Machete Ridge, the holds here were bomber. After the 5.4 pitch, the rest of the pitches were even easier and felt like the equivalent of a walk in the park. The only difficulty was the rope drag on the first pitch, but it was way easier than the rope drag that I faced up in Donner Pass. The bolts weren’t glued in (at least from what I can remember), but they were bomber.
What I Learned
I think after every multipitch I feel that the accomplishment of it is a culmination of all my rock climbing training and studying. This time was no different—to be able to not just survive but to help others climb safely is something that I take a lot of pride and joy in.
When we were rappelling from belay station 3 to belay station 1, we combined two 70m ropes to rappel past station 2, which has a hanging belay. While skipping that was great, dealing with 140m of rope was not. I think next time I should saddle them or maybe coil them because anything would have been better than what I ended up doing, which was random rope everywhere and needing to untie rope a bunch of times on the rappel down.
On the first pitch, I climbed with two extra quickdraws. They came in handy when I realized that there was one extra bolt since the guidebook was printed 17 years ago. I think I’m going to make it a thing to climb with two extra quick draws all the time.
We used the radios extensively and we were glad we had them. I had brought my own set of Motorola walkie-talkies but used Darlene’s Rocky Talkies since Marina had brought Rocky Talkies too. But what I didn’t like about the Rocky Talkies was that the channel was incredibly easy to change since the button to change them was easy to hit. Maybe there was a lock function I didn’t know about?
At belay station 3, on the way down, we had a situation where we had 2 people waiting to go up and the four in our party who were rappeling. To be safe, I locked a sling into one of the bolts and we all tied into that sling. Because the other party was climbing, we had a rat’s nest that was unavoidable.
I belayed Cassie from the two bolts near the start of pitch 2 instead of the one at the top of pitch 1 and I feel like I should have chosen the latter. I chose the former because I thought that it might be faster to transition to pitch 2, but I couldn’t see her until the very end and there was extra rope drag.
This was Cassie’s first multipitch and she was amazing. She was so good at communicating, cleaning, and transferring gear that I forgot at one point that this was her first multipitch experience.
To help everyone rappel, I pre-rigged everyone’s rappel devices at the rappel rings. I felt like a guide and although I had never done this before (had only heard about it on Instagram videos), it was easy enough to set up. Others in the party liked it, so I did it on all our rappels (I always went first).
On the hike back to the car, I came across a section where I could hike up and around a big boulder or we could do some light canyoneering and see if it led us back the right way. I thoroughly enjoyed the stemming moves required to go down the creek! It was also just fun to explore a route that I wasn’t sure would work out.
Our celebratory meal. Thanks to Cassie for the picture!
Friends
I climbed the Citadel with Cassie, Darlene, and Marina. I love all these individuals in different ways and spending the day with all three of them was divine. I don’t usually list Cassie because she is someone who already feels like an extension of me, and to share this multipitch with her—one that I had dreamed of climbing for the last two years—was special. As for Darlene and Marina, they are my rock climbing sisters—people who have helped me love rock climbing as much as I do now... but more than that they are dear friends who I love and who love me back just as much. It was so fun to hang out with them the whole day, especially at the top of the Citadel where we took in the views and celebrated our growth in overcoming fears and obstacles.
What Happened?
3.3 miles, 7 hrs 2 mins, 1030 ft of ascent
One of the routes that I wanted to cross off this year was the Citadel and when Darlene let me know she was game for it, we had a team of three. While I was grateful to have a friend who was down for climbing the Citadel, I knew that three wasn’t ideal as it takes twice as long compared to a team of two. It’d be better to have one more and make it an even four. I reached out to Marina and she was game for it, so we made a date and prayed that we wouldn’t have unexpected rains or injuries. While Marina was a bit banged up, she was still good to go, so we met up at my apartment at 6 AM and got to the western entrance to Pinnacles National Park around 7:40 AM.
We were surprised by the number of cars in the parking lot as it was a third full and I wondered if there would be a party ahead of us. We quickly packed our gear for the day, made our bathroom visits, and put on a good layer of sunblock. Darlene had brought a ginormous orange to share with the crew and she decided to bring it up to the top so that we could feast upon it when we summited.
I was a little worried as we started hiking as there was a morning fog that was thick in parts and the sky looked a bit wet. We decided as a group that when we got to the start of the route if the rock was wet or there were puddles of water near the start, we would abandon the climb and just go hiking for the day. Thankfully, all the rocks we touched were bone dry and there was no slickness to the rock whatsoever.
When we got to the first pitch, we found the first bolt easily, but the rest seemed hidden. Marina serendipitously found the second bolt—it was much more left than I had thought. We geared up and I started up the climb.
I found the climbing to be relaxing at most times as the holds were everywhere and the rock quality was solid. This was especially surprising as Pinnacles has a saying where it goes something like, “If there’s a hold you don’t like, it’s okay because you can take it home with you.” And my experience so far at Pinnacles had agreed with that sentiment—most rocks felt hollow and ready to crumble.
When Cassie and I topped out, we had the peak to ourselves. We enjoyed it for a while by taking silly photographs of each other and gawking at the beautiful scenery around us. After that, she started drawing while I photographed Darlene and Marina. When they joined us, we reveled in our achievements and celebrated with more pictures and fun conversations. After a bit, we chose to go down sooner than later as there was a party below us and we wanted to give them their own time at the top of the rock. We chose not to eat the giant orange due to time and decided to save it until we got back to the car.
The rappels were nice and easy, except for pitches 2 and 3, which we combined into a single one so that we could avoid the hanging belay station. The 140m of rope was too much for me to haul to the lip below me while on rappel. But after a few minutes of me looking like the spaghetti monster, I finally threw it off the lip and we were able to rappel again.
Our final rappel was pitch one and we found that as predicted, pitch 1 was almost exactly 34.5m, which meant that our 70m rope had almost no extra rope to spare at the end of the rappel.
We then hiked back to the car (which was no easy feat given the amount of loose gravel and dirt along the steep path) with a little bit of canyoneering and enjoyed our celebratory orange—which turned out to be a bit dehydrated—which was probably the same state we were in.
Overall, the day was a glorious one and I had a lot of fun at Pinnacles National Park. I’m not sure if it’s something I want to do again (like Machete Ridge), as most of the fun was overcoming my fears about the R-rating. I would say that the company was amazing and that’s what probably made this day so glorious—I keep finding out that it’s always about the people.
Thank you to Darlene for the first 4 pictures above and Marina for the bottom 4 pictures.