Catawba Falls

[flyminion]

I haven’t gotten up to the mountains much this summer due to all the rain in the forecast, but this weekend was forecasted to be dry (albeit somewhat cool), so I figured I would go ahead and take advantage of it. My plan was to drive up today and hit Catawba Falls, and then hit a swimming hole in Linville Gorge tomorrow. Catawba Falls has been on my swimming hole radar for a while, but it hasn’t really been a high priority. I was never really enticed by the pictures, but everyone who talks about it, including North Carolina Waterfalls author Kevin Adams, seems to really like it. There are actually two major waterfalls in this area. The main Catawba Falls clearly has no swimming hole, but Upper Catawba Falls, which is about a half mile upstream, has a clear pool at the base. These waterfalls are not exactly viral on the internet, but they do have somewhat of a social media presence, and there is no mention of people swimming here. That usually is not a good sign, but the trailhead is right off the interstate, so I figured it would be a good place to go on a day when I would be arriving later in the afternoon after a long drive. Today was that day.

My friend Ty, who accompanied me to Yellow Fork Falls last month, was up for another hike, so we met up just off the interstate exit and drove to the trailhead. The parking area was pretty full, which wasn’t surprising given that the falls are easily accessible and pretty well known. Every time I approached what looked like an available parking spot, I saw that it had a handicap only sign in front of it, which was kind of puzzling given that this was a parking lot of a hiking trail. After we found some legit parking spaces, Ty suggested that this might be a wheelchair accessible trail, but it definitely wasn’t (unless you have crazy upper body strength, and mountain bike tires on your wheelchair). Tangent: after typing that last sentence, I did a google search, and all-terrain wheelchairs are actually a thing. Who knew? Anyway, getting back on topic, the trail to the falls was a pretty straight shot up the creek with a moderate grade. We first came to an old collapsed dam with a couple of cascades beneath it that totaled about 25 feet.



The hillside blocks the view of the whole cascade, but there is another drop after the one you can see in the picture. I’ve seen this referred to as Lower Catawba Falls.

We came to the main Catawba Falls about a mile into the hike. It was a tall, mossy, stair-steppy waterfall. There had to be over 100 feet worth of cascades there.

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You can’t tell from the pictures, but there’s more to the waterfall than what is visible from the base. This area was pretty crowded, and the waterfall had people all over it, so we decided to continue up the trail to the main attraction: Upper Catawba Falls. Now, I hadn’t read up on this hike recently, so the details of what was about to happen were not fresh on my mind. I knew that the trail from this point would be a hand-over-foot scramble to the top of the falls, but I was under the impression that Upper Catawba Falls was right behind the main Catawba Falls, so I didn’t think it would be that big of a deal. I didn’t have much trouble with it from a technical standpoint, but from an endurance standpoint, IT KICKED MY ASS. It wasn’t a short scramble like I thought. It was a sustained quarter mile (at least) of this shit:



However, we did make it a little harder on ourselves than we had to. At the top of the rope in the picture, we came to a fork in the trail. The left fork went down to the creek near some cascades, and the right fork continued steeply up the hill. We assumed the left fork was a dead-end side trail, so we took the right fork. It FINALLY crested and started going back down again. According to the topo map, it was about a 350 foot elevation gain in less than half a mile. I have done several steep scrambles that have basically amounted to rock climbing in certain spots (e.g., Raven Cliff Gorge on Upper Creek, Steels Creek Falls, Raven Cliff Falls in Georgia, Sliding Rock Trail in Tallulah Gorge), but I don’t recall doing one that was this steep for this long of a distance. I don’t think I have ever been so hot and tired during a hike, except maybe the time I ran all the way down and all the way back up the Singley Falls trail at Three Forks last year. I decided that as soon as we got to the falls, I was going to go straight into the water without easing in. It seemed to take forever to get there. According to my fitness tracker, we got to Upper Catawba Falls about 0.6 miles and 20 minutes after we started up from the base of main Catawba Falls.

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As the trail descended down to the creek, we had to stop and wait for a group of people with dogs to descend (I can imagine that it must be an ordeal to bring a dog up here). As soon as they were out of the way, I crossed the creek, put my stuff down, and waded into the water. It was pretty cold (not quite Devil’s Bathtub level cold, but close). I almost went back on my pledge not to ease in, but the portion of my body not immersed in the water still had a thick aura of intense heat around it, so I fell forward and went in up to my shoulders. I swam around the pool to check the depth, as that was my primary reason for coming up here. It was up to my shoulders in the middle.





The deepest part was right next to the large rock on the river right, but I could still touch there with my tiptoes. It was probably about six feet deep. I was getting cold from the shoulders down, but I was still radiating heat from the neck up. It was a weird feeling. I got out, but my head was still too hot, so I jumped back in and went under the water. I was sufficiently cooled down after I got out the second time, and the sun was starting to dip down behind the hillside, so I was getting a little chilly. Ty said he couldn’t come all the way up here and then wuss out, but he was only able to go in up to his thighs.

We took some pictures and then headed back down. We were worried that the descent was going to be more treacherous than the ascent, but there were plenty of things to hold onto, so it ended up not being that bad. Also, we stayed close to the creek this time, and we discovered that what we had thought was a dead-end side trail on the way up was actually a through path that would have gotten us to the upper falls a lot more easily. We advised one hiker of this as we passed her near the fork, and she thanked us for the heads up. Once we got back down to the base of main Catawba Falls, it was a pretty easy walk back to the car, although it seemed longer than it did on the way in. Ty said he would consider coming on tomorrow’s hike, but given the unexpected strenuousness of today’s hike, I’m not holding my breath. I was jonesing for a steak, but Morganton doesn’t exactly have a good selection of steakhouses. I was disappointed with Sagebrush the last time I was here, so I went to AJ’s Family Steakhouse this time, but it was about the same. They did have an all-you-can-eat buffet though, so I probably would have left happier if I had partaken of that instead of ordering a steak. Still not completely full, I went to Hwy 55 Burgers and Shakes and got a custard loaded with sprinkles. What better way to end a swimming hole trek than with lots of sprinkles?



In conclusion, while Catawba Falls are a nice set of waterfalls, the area comes up short from a swimming hole standpoint. I guess the pool at Upper Catawba Falls could pass with a C- for a legit swimming hole, since I’m guessing the average person wouldn’t be able to touch the bottom in all areas (I’m pretty tall and I had to stand on my tiptoes), and it’s not exactly displeasing from an aesthetic standpoint. I might be able to speak more highly of it if it were a little deeper or had a little something extra, like a rope swing or a safe jump. I wasn’t disappointed since I didn’t really have any expectations, and I sure was glad that the pool was there after working up the sweat required to access it.