One of America’s youngest national parks, Pinnacle sits just 2 hours south of San Francisco in the California Central Valley. The park is quite remote and unknown at the moment. There is only a single lane county road connecting the park to the nearest establishment so please be sure to have a good GPS, and concentration while driving to avoid accidents.
Once in, the park’s only service center is the visitor center, which is actually outside of the park. The roads are narrow and this isn’t really a recreational park that provided camping, boating, biking etc so I strongly recommend against visiting with any vehicles larger than an suv.
The park is made of ancient volcanic geology. So there are some very unique landscape to explore with moderate hiking. The climate is desert arid so be sure to hydrate and prepare shades.
Overall, it is a park worthy of visiting if you enjoy nature, unique landscape, and wish to get away from the crowd. One closing note- at the time of this writing the park has very limited parking near its hiking trailheads so the ranger will actually keep cars outside of the park to wait for vehicles exit before letting a vehicle in. In general the wait isn’t longer than 15 min but it is well worth it as this reduces the crowd in the park.
