The Wonderful and true legend of Pinnacle Pierre.
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TheBOOOOYA! Presents:
GuestSpeaker
PinnaclePierre
A good and dear friend of TheBOOOOYA! himself!
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I wouldn’t be alive today if it wasn’t for PinnaclePierre.
Truly a man with a history like no other. He lives by his own rules and with his own hands, without any need for society or any human contact, hardly. Once a year he travels into my town, BlueJay, and stays for about two weeks to buy supplies, get re-acquainted, sharpen his tools, etc.. and then slips back out of societys view. Some would call him a hermit, a recluse, or a strange relic from a long gone era, but to me, he is simply a badass like no other.
Upon meeting him I became completely intrigued by his lifestyle and his hardships, and listening to his stories, I just knew they had to be shared. So, when he came into town last week I asked him if he wouldn’t mind writing up a post for us, maybe a brief overview of his lineage, how he got to be here, including how he got to be a hermit. And he agreed!
If you saw PinnaclePierre on the streets you would think he were in need of urgent medical attention. The man is seventy years old, his arms and face are wrinkled beyond comprehension, but he is as strong as the cliffs he traverses and as solid as the mountain he calls his home.
Here now is a picture of the LakeArrowhead Pinnacles
… And an older picture of his cabin home when it was first built.
As a young BOOOOYA!, I have loved the mountain way of living ever since my first summer camp trip to a place called ClearCreek in the Angeles mountains. There is a stoic power, a certainty, and an absolute calmness, inherent in the essence of the mountain itself that appeals to me very much. I was in Jr. High at the time and ever since then it has always been my dream to one day live in this paradise nestled inbetween SanBernardino County and the Northern Deserts. As I got older I began to take trips up here with friends, renting cabins, swimming in the lake, and in general, hiking and exploring every single trail available. On occasion, I would travel up here on my own.
In the winter of ‘97 I went solo trekking high into the Arrowhead Pinnacles of the San Bernardino Mountains. I wanted to get away and perhaps maybe I wanted to feel completely alone. My hike took me through an area known to be one of the most trecherous, a place known as HeadHunter valley. I had supplies in my pack, food, water, a blade, and the arrogance, or courage of a young teenage BOOOOYA!. I started early in the morning hiking through the main pass. The air was slightly arrid and the winds powerfully gusty. I can recall questioning myself and thinking about turning around and heading back. I could see that there were dark clouds in the sky but they were not black enough, or close enough, to persuade me to leave.
A few hours past noon, I found myself climbing halfway up the side of the face of WallowCracks -when the fiercest winds I have ever experienced began to blow and gust and sway my rope from side to side. I am not an expert rock climber by any means and my gear consisted of nothing more than rope, a few caribiners, some really good climbing shoes, and sheer gusto. I buckled down and clung to my rope but even the mountain itself creaked and rumbled from the ferocity of these high winds coming from the east.
It began to drizzle on me making my hands wet and weak. The storm moved faster than I anticipated or was prepared for. It began to hail. My hands began to freeze, I had no gloves, and the realization of my weakness filled me with terror. Climbers get hurt when they get the fear inside them. Everyone knows that. I clung to my rope paralyzed for a few moments not knowing what to do. I had the fear inside me.
I knew I couldn’t go up much further or risk falling all the way down. I was stuck! My instincts clicked on and automatically switched me to survival mode, I started searching for a way to withstand. I was afraid but I knew that if I just stayed there, it could only get worse. I needed to move. I needed to get out quickly. I just couldn’t hang there all night.
Sometimes life gives you no choice, and the only option is to move forward and persevere. I knew that, and so I did. I looked for the most secure footholds that I could find and began searching for the safest route up. I leaned back to get a clearer view of the mountain and Thankfully, I found a ledge, it was a few meters above me and to the left. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to make it that far up, everthying was wet and slippery now, and the ledge was just beyond the reach of my fingertips. Knowing that it was my only choice, I had to try. Summoning all my strength, I gripped the wet rock so tightly it punctured my palm and fingers, and hoisted myself and my pack up to it.
For the moment I was safe. I can remember thinking to myself that the worst was over. All I had to do now was survive the rain and the winds and not freeze to death.
With the clouds gathering above I could see this night’s storm would be angrier than anything I’ve ever witnessed before. I tucked myself deeper into the covey. With the last remaining minutes of daylight I setup an emergency camp on that small ledge. I had a sleeping bag rated for negative 40 degrees weather and I was still freezing. I’m not sure if it was my fears, coming down from my adrenaline rush, or just being soaked wet that had me trembling so bad. I lay scrunched in my bag and squeezed my hands underneath my thighs to warm up but still couldn’t sleep. Every few minutes my own trembling body would wake me in and out of consciousness. Then it began to snow.
The snow lasted a while and then turned to sleet and continued to pour down, and with my sleeping bag soaked I could feel it beginning to freeze like a gortex popsicle. I turned and tried to wedge myself even closer to the inside of the ledge but instead, inadvertently, I knocked my pack off the side. Nothing could get worse. My pack had all my rope, my food, my climbing equipment. And my matches and flashlight. Really, nothing could get worse.
I looked down to where my pack had fallen but only saw the darkness of oblivion below me. I knew that I was strong enough and would probably survive the night but, without a fire and with no one around to help me, I would definitely be in dire need of assistance by morning. I didn’t tell my parents where I would be going. Nobody knew my location. I began to think of all the times my parents lectured me and warned me about exactly these types of situations.
But then, as if hallucinating, I heard the grunts and sounds of a climber making his way up towards me. Down in the deep below me, through the rain, and the sleet, and the wind, and the snow, I saw a lone figure. A wirey man, climbing the same route that I had just struggled through and barely survived. He found me shivering in my bag and took care of me the rest of the night. At first I wasn’t sure if he was an apparition of my dellusions, afterall what kind of a madman carries a jug of whisky around his neck and solo climbs up a very dificult route without any gear?
The man who saved my life was PinnaclePierre.
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…And this was the route he climbed. (back view)
He built a fire for me and billowed the smoke up to the moon. And once the weather relented and the whisky hit my gut, we got to talking about who he was and why he was there.
Turns out, he’s a badass like no other.
And, He will Always be a good and dear friend of TheBOOOOYA!
Now,
I will let PinnaclePierre speak for himself and tell you his story:
“There is just something gut wrenchingly special about hanging off of a hook that’s only grasping an 1/8 inch flake of rock 100 feet off the deck.” -PinnaclePierre
Well i never done nothing like this before. but if ya’all want to hear my story,
ill reckon start this off at the end, when i get to the begining ill stop.
well heck maybe i outta tell it ya’all the way it really happened.
way back in 1846 my great grandpappy Byron Bonapart set off to
sea as a cabin boy at the wee age of nine years old, he encounterd
many a strange things and made many a fine mates in those years at
sea, but in the year of 1856 they sailed into new york harbor and
Byron said to him self “this is truly a land of many great opertunitys”
and decided he would make this land his new home.
My great grandpappy was a mean drinker and a fighter.
He had multiple run ins with the law, about 4 months after he
entered the U.S. he punched a feller in the nose and broke his
face for disrespectin a lady, and they tried to throw him in the
stockade but my great grandpappy punched the deputy in the stomach
and left town. He had heard many stories about the gold rush here in
california so he packed his belongings and headed to the west.
by the time he made it to calfornia in 1859 he heard people sayin
that most of the gold in the sierras had been found so he thought
he would give a try to a place that hadn’t been sucked of its
resorces, he headed high in the San Bernardino mountains of
southern california where in the spring of 1860 he made a stake
on a claim in Holcomb Valley.
sevarl mounths later he began to have relations with one of the local
camp town ladies miss Gwyneth Purdue, she was so dun rite purdy that
all the men in the town sang her praises and wanted to dance with her.
on a very cold and snowy feburary afternoon in 1861 Gwyneth gave
birth to Byrons son, my grandpappy Monteque Bonapart, sadly
Gwyneth died in child birth and it apsolutly devistated Byron so he sunk
deeper into his obsession of striking it rich and spent many a long days
digging in his mine.
one hot and dusty summer day my great grandpapy finaly sruck it rich!
he found more gold than he could spend in 10 lifetimes, he countinued mining
upuntuill spetember 17 1868 when an earthquake hit causing a cave in. The
town rallied to save him. They made teams and tried to excivate my great
grandpappy boulder by boulder but when they finally reached him, they saw
his body crushed underneath a beam and piles of rubble. The townsfolk said he
held that beam with his back and shoulders as long as humanly possible, his brute
strength and will power held that mountain from collapsing on him for
two whole days. Legend has it, if you listen hardenuff some times you can
still hear my old great grandpapy Byrons pick axes hitting the stone and
panning through the gravel he excivated.
now my grandpappy Monteque had no other living relatives in the
states so he was sent to a boys home for improvished waiffs to live in
San Bernardino. He stayed there till the age of thirteen when he
ran away to live on his own in the mountains of San Gregonio. No
one knows what happened to him or exsactely where he was for all
that time afterwards but he emerged fourteen years later in 1889 with
a mute Cherokee indian woman who carried his unborn baby.
My grandpappy Monteque took her back to his old town to live in his old
cabin where he was born. when he started remodeling and rummaging through
all his old stuff and remembering all his old memories they moved the
old wood burning stove and underneath they found an old cermaic whiskey
bottle and in it they found a map to the location where his pappy, my great
grandpappy Byron Bonapart had buried a large sum of the gold that he had
mined out of his Holcomb valley claim.
They looked for that durn gold harder than an old coon lookin for berries but were
unsuccesful in finding it. Later that year my very own pappy Fritz Monteque Bonapart
was born in that same cabin his father was. The family tried mining the old claim that
had colapsed on Byron for many years after but were completely unsuccesful.
Discouraged and depressed my grandpappy went into town and took to drinkin at the
local salloon where drunkenly he began to talk about the awful luck he had in finding
the gold his grandfather had struck. There were a couple of men who took advantage of
him, befriended him and convinced him to tell them where this treasure was. A few days later
my own pappy Fritz was out exploring in the hills, the dirty claimsjumpers came and shot
my grandpappy because he wouldnt tell them where the map was, it killed him dead.
They kidnapped my grandma and destroyed the house looking for the map but couldn’t
find it. They tried to get my grandma to tell them where the map was but she wouldn’t say
and so they killed her too. When my pappy Fritz got home he saw his pappy dead and his
mum dead so he rumaged through the mess and packed up a few of his remaining possessions,
among them was the map that was hidden in the outside of the house by the woodshed.
Now seventeen years old my pappy Fritz travelled away from Holcomb valley via Holcomb
valley creek down the narrows stretch all the way to Deep Creek and buried that durn map at
the Deep Creek - Mojave river merge. He was fearful to return to Holcomb valley because he
didn’t want to suffer the same fate his mum and pap did, and spent his life travelling up and down
the Pacific Crest trail visiting Canada and Mexico and working inbetween at lumberjack camps in
the forests that he passed through.
Around the 1900’s my pappy Fritz was working in Oregon in one of those lumberjack camps
and it was payday so all the lumberjacks headed on down to town and that is where he met my
mum. A fine classy lady and the daughter of the owner of the general store. Fritz decided that
his life of travel would be no way to raise a family and so they headed down to southern
california back to the place of his birth where he acquired a job in 1921 for the Arrowhead Lake
company to complete the lake arrowhead reservoir.
In 1921 lake arrowhead company, a los angeles syndicate, purchased little bear lake and
all of its properties from the arrowhead reservoir and power company. They immediately
began work finishing the arrowhead dam. Thanks to my pap it was raised to a final height
of 184 feet.
With the newly supplied water and the new income he was able to build a cabin below the
boulder mountains of the pinnacles where my pappy Fritz and his wife Odessa had a
wonderful baby. Me. Pierre Bonaparte. son of Fritz Monteque Bonapart. and Boy I
was a scoundrel! I spent many of the days of my chilldhood going up into the
pinnacles, for me the pinnacles were where i was really meant to be.
When i was 11 years old my papy Fritz took me down to DeepCreek. It couldn’t
been more than a few months after winter and all the snow melt turned the creek into
a mean ol river that rushed past us and froze your bones if you dipped in it. We
followed the creek till it merged into another river, the mojavie river. there my pappy
gave me instructions to dig a very deep hole at the base of a small cliff next to the river,
to my suprise there was a map buried there! it was the map my great grandpappy
Byron had made many many years ago. My pap Fritz said it was my heritage.
On the hike home we lost our trail and had to cross deep creek back via a fallen
tree that stradled the river, i went first and had no proroblems at all but when my papy
went to cross it he slipped, fell into the river and hit his head on a stone casuing him to
be swept down the river unconscious, i jumped right in and tried my hardest to save
him but when i finaly made it to him he had drownd.
so right after my pappys death my mum got to a drinking quite heavily,
she got to the point were she started bootleggin her own grog, and might i say
she brewed a mighty feerce swig. About that time they had a started with what
they called the prohabition and before long they rounded up my mum for runnin
a still and they threw her in jail, but, that jail was no place for my mum and shortly
after they put her in that jail she became frightfully sick and perished,
god bless her soul. A few months afterthat they repealed prohibition.
so that left me completly by my lonesome and with plenty of time to kill, so i dug
out that old map i had found with my father on the day of his passin and headed
up to Holcomb valley to find my great grandpapy Byrons gold! Shortly after i got
there i found the gold, tweren’t no trouble at alls. by nabbit there was so much gold
in that there hole i had to make about 25 trips from Holcomb valley back down
the pinnacles to transport it.
now that i had more money that i could ever spend i began to live my life
as they say “high off the hog” i had bought myself a beautiful home next to lake
arrowhead where i would throw extravigant parties that all sorts of them
hollywood celebritys would attend. By this time lake arrowhead had become
a world famous resort and I got to meet Jane Seymore and Jean Myers, and
Jessica Lange and even ol Bing Crosby made it up my way.
After about 2 years of living this exsitance i grew tired of such comforts, celebrities
and all those other rich snobs… shoot they ain’t care about nothing that really mattered.
so one day i said “hell Perri, i dont need all this “stuff” and i burned down my mansion
and moved deep into the pinnacles where i have been ever since… i dont quite recelct
how long i have been livin up here in the pinnacles but it has been some time, certainly
longer than you have prolly been alive. the only time i return to lake arrowhead and other
surounding towns is once a year for about two weeks to gather all the essentials and
suplies I need for the remaning year.
It reminds me of this one time i came down about 25 years ago, i had been drinking
some of that fine grog my mum had shown me how to brew and i was drunker than a
skunk in june! some fiddelin ben that was dressed all fancy like was hangin around with his
buddys and started given me a hard time, poken fun at the way i was dressed and the
way i talked so him and i bergan to brawl… naturaly i laid him down in a matter of
seconds so all his buddys jumped on in and, well i took a few good ones but nothin like
what they took.. in about 10 minuets the local sherif and his deputys were there and arrested
me for beating all of them punks senssless. they jailed me in Twin Peaks and told me
they inteded on holding me for a few months, and then some!
A young lass took kindly to me and began bringing me jerky and candy bars and
things like that. She was the constable clerk and I ain’t never seen nobody wear a skirt
like her. Woooooooo she wore her long golden curls down to her little waist and her
hips, boy I tell ya, healthy legs so thick, boy I tell ya, Cody was her name and she
just about made me wish to all in heaven for sweet release. I wanted to marry
the girl and make her civil by the courts and build her a garden to tend stead
of working in jail and guarding fellers like me.
One day she come in to me with an apple pie baked fresh from her oven and she
says, “Pierre, I don’t see why a man like you should be in a place like this”. Then I
says, “Why, I reckon it’s just my time to pay the fiddler miss cody”. I says that to her
and then she winks her purdy big blue eyes at me and told me inside the pie was a couple
of clips and pins I could use to bust myself outta there. Now, I ain’t never seen cody
again after that, I picked my locks and high tailed it outta there, but I will never forget
how on earth a fine woman like that weren’t married or spoken for. A damn shame I
tell you. Its surprising that in this day and age…
so the years went by and i dropped by that jail house once or twice to look into the window
and see if i could catch a glimps of my savior but never did see her there again, a youger
lad that i saw out side the jail house told me that she had quit her job the day after a
prisoner excaped and she moved out of town. ahh she was mighty beautiful. I never met
another lady like her and that is why i never been married.
I remembers bout 15 years ago i came mighty close to getting married. I was down at deep creek
fishing for trout when i decided to go by the hot springs and take a dip, well when i got there to my
suprise there where other people there… i had been going there all my life and i recon i havent
never seen another soul down there, but this time there must have been about 10 or 11 people
swiming in the hot waters of the springs and most of them were young women. they were what
some people call naturalist or as i say nudists. well we all got acuainted and started swopin storys
and what not…
i got to know this one gal who told me all about her family. All the people there swimmin were her
brothers and sisters. She told me all sorts of things about living with her and all the while I just stood
there gawkin at her teets. I didn’t care for no communal living or whatever. I reckon I rather just jump
on in than talk so I pull my pants off and jump right in with them. later that day i decided i would tell
them about the true gem of the hot springs, a little pool about 20 feet to the left of the main volcanic
line that the spring runs through, its a lithium deposit in the earth and makes you feel mighty kooky
If you swim in it, so we all went for a dip and well we all got mighty kooky. yup yup, but I liked them
folks and that gal was mighty generous and all that but, to this day ain’t no woman been able to put
her clampers down on ol Pierre.
speakin of kooky, i do belive i’m tired of writing and so I better tells you about a kooky kid I met in the
winter of 97. i spyed some fella hiking by his loansome up around my home in the pinnacles, it got me
mighty curious what a fella would be doing out there on such a cold winter day… as the day went on i
could smell and feel that a storm was a brewin so i figured i outta track this fella down and make sure
he doesent get him self in a pickle.
after about 25 or 30 minutes i was hot on his tracks, i dont think he ever noticed i was there.
next thing i know he is at the base of a mighty high cliff and a fixin to climb it, i reconed to
myself “i like this fella, he climbs just like i do, but he has no clue about the storm thats going to
catch him when he is up there on the face” well i kept on a watching him from the base of the crag
as he pulled out some some truly amazing newfangled hooks that he would place in the cracks of the
rocks to keep him from fallin, as a matter of a fact he even had a special pair of sneekers to climb this
rock. They hugged his feel like socks. i had never seen anything like this before and i had climbed that
very stone hundreds of time before with out any of this gear and no rope.
the storm finaly rolled in when he was about 2/3 of the way up and i knew he was going to be in a mighty
tight spot up there if he was lucky enough to survive the night, so i did what any good fella whould do
and headed right up after him. next thing i know i saw his pack fly right on down behins my back and plundge
to the ground! so i doubled my climb pace to reach him before he did the same. in what i recon was a few minutes
i had reched the fella who by that time was soakin wet layin there on a little ledge, so i gave him a few swigs of
some of my homemade grog and that wormed him right on up. i ended up stayin there with him to early
that next morning when the storm cleared, but in that night me and that fella swaped some mighty fine tales
and ever since then we have been great buddys and when ever i come to town to get some gear for the up
coming winter i stop by and swap some more tales and drink some of my fine grog with my friend the booooya!
****** End of Story **********
Hahahaha… Great story and Great ending.
Yeah, this kooky kid owes you his life. Thanks for the story and for everything Pierre.
You will always be a badass to me. -BOOOOYA!
Well that’s it folks. I hope you enjoyed this weeks Guest Speaker. I sure did.
Until next time…
Happy Saturday to ALL!
-BOOOOYA!