Hikers find ways to stay cool in high temps at Pinnacles National Park

Pinnacles National Park, where the high temperature was above 106 degrees, was one of the Central Coast’s hottest spots Wednesday as an inland heat wave entered day six.

The heat, which started to significantly rise on Friday, didn’t keep hikers like Edgar Perez away. He traveled from the Bay Area and wasn’t going to let the triple-digit temperatures stop him from seeing the famous California condors for which the park was made famous.

“We were coming in and two condors came in and started flying above us, it was beautiful,” said Perez. “I came up for a day hike and it’s hot, really hot. It’s all worth it.”

John and Kathleen Howell actually came to Pinnacles to escape the heat.

“It’s not too bad,” said John Howell. “We are from Palmdale. We came this way to get out of the heat, but it is hot. You wouldn’t want to spend more than an hour and half or two hours out in this heat.”

Some visitors were a bit surprised by the soaring temperatures, though.

“We knew it would be hot, not sure it was going to be this hot, so luckily we had enough water with us,” said Jan Bryson, visiting from Colorado.

The trails, away from the shade, were blistering, but not everywhere in the park was as hot.

“It’s not so bad in the caves,” said Tanner Bryson, a student at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.

“The caves cool it down a whole lot.” “It felt really nice when I got into the caves because the cool air was coming in,” said Perez. “I just spent half an hour in there cooling off.”

But you aren’t going to find much water, so having lots of H2O is a must.

“Water is the big thing…lots of water,” said John Howell. “You can dehydrate real quickly out there.”

It was certainly hot at Pinnacles, but the national park wasn’t the only hot spot. Parts of the San Antonio Valley and Bradley saw temperatures in between 105 and 110 degrees.