Bear Gulch Cave (Pinnacles National Monument)

A fun adventure hike for families with hills, rocks, and water. Keep an eye out for wildlife!
Ecosystems: chaparral, oak woodland, rock and scree, and (man-made) reservoir.

Below is the Google Map location where we parked. If you’re using Apple Maps, use the following coordinates: 36.478532, -121.183889

This hike is accessed from the east side of the park. There are two entrances that are not connected by roads. It’s quite a drive for us, so we camped here for two nights. It’s a really great camp site and I highly recommend it.

We drove from the campsite to this parking lot at the start of the hike. There’s a bathroom to use before you head out.

Off we go!

There’s a short cave to walk through.

We were all so excited to walk through the Bear Gulch Cave because there is a colony of bats that live there. But unfortunately it was closed. Later I found that Pinnacles has a Cave Status page on their website. It’s closed mid-May through mid-July.

If you were doing the Condor Gulch hike (#126), you’d turn right here. But for this hike, we’ll keep heading straight, loop around and end up coming back down on the Condor Gulch route.

Amazing views!

As for me, I was taking it slow, soaking in all the beautiful sights, but the kids were having fun speed walking over the rocky terrain.

This is where we would have come out of the caves, had it been open.

This section was amazing! I wonder how this formed.

Stairs up to the reservoir. Little kids could manage well supervised, but I’d definitely want to be holding tight to a toddler here.

The Bear Gulch Reservoir…

We hung out here for quite a while. The kids really enjoyed just sitting and daydreaming, but they especially liked throwing rocks into the reservoir. It made a really cool echoing plunk sound.