Cardinal Pinnacle
Bishop Creek Canyon (Hwy 168), west of Bishop · near Bishop · Eastern Sierra
Rock Climbing
At a glance
- Skill level
- advanced
- Grade range
- 5.6-5.12c
- Best season
- May-October (~8,000 ft); climbable on warm winter days
Permits and booking
- Permit
- Inyo NF - no climbing permit. Short approach off the Bishop Creek / Hwy 168 corridor toward Lake Sabrina. Snow limits winter access.
Worth knowing
- Good for a first timer
- No
Rock Climbing detail
- Climb types
- trad · multi-pitch
- Rock type
- Sierra granite
- Route count
- ~20 routes
- Signature routes
- Regular Route · West Face · Crack Kingdom
- Intl tip
- One of the best short-approach multi-pitch crags on the Eastside. The Regular Route (5.6) is a superb intro to Sierra multi-pitch; the West Face and Crack Kingdom are the splitter testpieces. On the Bishop Creek road toward Lake Sabrina.
The guide
Cardinal Pinnacle is a jewel-box of Eastern Sierra crack climbing - a clean, freestanding granite tower up the Bishop Creek roa…
In the Guidebook
Everything above is yours for free. The written guide to Cardinal Pinnacle — what it is actually like, and what we would tell a friend before they went — comes with the Guidebook.
Getting there
- Coordinates
- 37.228, -118.596