North Fork American River
Aug. 14th, 2017 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flyminion
Today, Cade and I went to a lesser-known swimming hole on the North Fork American River. I learned of this one from a cliff jumping video on youtube, but the person who posted the video did not reveal the exact whereabouts or name of the waterfall, so I had to do a fair amount of search-engine detective work and scanning of Google Earth to pinpoint the location. And finding the location on a map per se was only half the battle; once I found it, I then had to figure out how to get there. There were enough clues and tidbits of information scattered about in various corners of the internet, but finding them and compiling them into something usable was sort of like a swimming hole treasure hunt. It seems that people who glorify this area as a swimming hole and/or cliff jumping spot want to keep the location a secret, so I will follow suit and only use vague location references. This place had sort of gone into the ‘maybe pile’ when I was researching California swimming holes, but Cade said the he wanted to go, so we ended up deciding to do it. I had initially dismissed it as a possibility for this trip when I first discovered it, because the only information I could find about accessing it said that it was accessible via a long hike down into Royal Gorge (reports of the trail length varied from 6-9 miles one way depending on the source), and I was only looking for swimming holes that could be done as day trips. However, when scanning Google Earth, I saw bits and pieces of what looked like a possible shortcut trail (and by “shortcut”, I mean 3 miles instead of 9). On the satellite imagery, the maybe-trail disappears into the forest a few times and re-emerges, and it was unclear whether the trail segments I was seeing were actually connected. I did manage to find one blog entry that seemed to confirm the existence of a shortcut trail in that same vicinity, but the blogger didn’t provide any information on the exact whereabouts of the trailhead. I decided to take a chance and assume that the trail I could see on Google Earth was the same one the blogger had mentioned.Getting there was kind of a doozy. It involved about nine miles of driving on mountainous dirt roads in the middle of nowhere. The roads were rough but passable in most areas, but the last couple of miles before the trailhead where a white knuckle ride. The road had these pervasive humps that we had to go very slowly over to avoid bottoming out. A high clearance vehicle is probably necessary to navigate this road, and Cade has a medium clearance vehicle, which made it suspenseful each time we had to go over a hump (which was probably at least once every 20 feet). It was also unclear whether we were trespassing on timber company property in some areas. There were "no trespassing" signs posted everywhere, but we weren’t sure if they applied to the road or just to the woods. When we got near the trailhead, we stopped to take in the national-park-quality views.
This part of the road was a bit steep, and we almost didn’t make it up despite having all-wheel drive. The trailhead was not much farther past this point. We started down the trail just before 2 PM. The trail descends the side of the gorge in a steady series of switchbacks for almost the entire 2200 feet of elevation loss. The trail started off in a shrubby meadow and then descended into a forest of large evergreen trees. The trail was actually not super steep (although I can’t say the same for the hillside that one would tumble down if they fell off the trail) and fairly well maintained, which was surprising given that this place felt super off-the-books. We caught our first glimpse of the waterfall through binoculars about 1.3 miles into the hike, but we were still pretty high above the gorge floor. It was pretty easy going until we reached a deep wash about 2.7 miles into the hike. We had to use ropes to descend into the wash and climb back up the other side. I went down first, and the bank was so loose and dry that each step created a small avalanche of dirt and rocks, which went airborne and created a dust cloud when it hit the point where the breeze was moving through the wash. I dislodged the majority of the dirt when I went down, but Cade kicked some up as well, as you can see in the video.
The descent actually didn't look that bad from the top, but I thought it looked super sketchy after I got to the bottom and looked back up. There was a small spring that emerged into the wash through a hole in the hillside.
On the other side of the wash, the trail passes by a large pond hemmed by a cliff.
After this, the trail emerges into an open area where it switchbacks the rest of the way down to the river through piles of loose rocks. When we got to the gorge floor around 3:40 PM, we caught our first up-close glimpse of the river. I knew we were in for a treat when even this ‘uneventful’ pool rivaled the main swimming hole of Devil’s Bathtub back in Virginia.
The clear blue pools here looked similar to what we had seen at the South Yuba River, but with much more impressive geology and scenery. The river tumbled over several small waterfalls in a narrow slot canyon before flowing under the bridge where the official trail intersected with the trail we were on.
The slot canyon continued for a short distance past the bridge and emerged into a large swimming hole just after the point where a tributary creek spilled (err, trickled) in from the side.
Cade wanted to set up base here, but I was ready to get to the main waterfall, which was just downstream of this pool. I worked my way along the river and around the deep chasm that the waterfall spills into (photos by Cade):
When I got around to the cliffs across the river from the falls, I looked up to the rim of the gorge where the car was parked and tried not to think about the 2200 foot ascent that lay ahead of us on the return hike.
While I hung out down here, I could see Cade climbing around on the cliffs next to the falls. Can you spot him?
The falls looked almost majestic, kicking up a spray with a rainbow and spilling into a deep, blue pool.
I worked my way down to the river, and it felt pretty cold. I got in and quickly got back out. The cliffs were perfect for jumping. The water was deep directly below them, and there was a wide range of jumping heights from two to fifty feet or more. I wanted to try a jump, but the water was so cold I thought I might freeze up when I hit it, so I was hesitant to jump without anyone else around. I didn’t see Cade anywhere, so I assumed he had decided to stay at the upper pool. I grabbed my stuff and started to head up there, but then I saw him making his way down to the falls. When he got there, I went into the water again to get “used” to it, and then I jumped from five feet. I moved up to a jump that was probably 10-12 feet, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I probably would have if the water had felt more refreshing, but I didn’t want to plunge deep into this water. I jumped from five feet a couple more times, and then Cade and I walked around on the rocks downstream of the plunge pool. Cade was thinking of jumping from about 25 feet, but he could not bring himself to go into the cold water. I was curious to see how cold it actually was (I estimated about 60 °F give or take), so I got my thermometer to find out. I took several readings that ranged from 56.5 to 60 °F depending on the depth of the water where I took them.
We went back to the upper pool and slot canyon below the bridge. The water in the slot canyon was pretty deep, so I jumped a couple of times from about eight feet (stills from a video recorded by Cade):
It was getting close to 5 PM, and we knew we had a long hike and drive out of here, but Cade decided he wanted to at least get in the water before we left. I lay down on the warm rocks to dry off while I waited for Cade to work up the nerve to take the icy plunge. He finally jumped in after hesitating for fifteen minutes. I was starting to get hot again by this point, so I jumped in again. We both jumped a couple more times and briefly swam in the pool just beyond the slot canyon. I didn’t want to leave, because this was definitely a nice area. It looked almost like a water park, but plopped down in a scenic gorge. I’m not into camping, but I would definitely reconsider if the camping were to take place here. I’m sure there are tons more swimming holes both upstream and downstream of the area we visited today (I’ve seen several in YouTube videos), and I would love to experience more of them.
We headed out around 5:30 PM, and the hike back up was pretty uneventful. I didn’t think it was that bad, but I’m not sure Cade would agree. It was 3.49 miles from the bridge back to the car, according to my fitness tracker, and it took just under two hours. I wish I could say the drive out was also uneventful, but the ordeal nearly ended up giving me an anxiety attack. Cade was unsure if his car could make it up one of the hills that we had come down just before the trailhead, so he wanted to try an alternate route out through the network of gravel forest roads. We tried two or three different roads, but two of them had impasses (at least for our level of clearance), and one of them ended up taking us in the wrong direction. We bottomed out on the first road we tried, which bent back the metal support for the exhaust system under the car and pushed it up against the exhaust pipe. After that, we could hear the metal jiggling against the exhaust pipe, and we could smell the burning from the friction. Cade was able to move the bar away from the pipe by hammering it with a rock, but we bottomed out again in the same spot when we had to backtrack. Cade tried again to pry the metal back into place himself, but this time he was unable to do it with the tools he had available. At this point, I was getting anxious and was worried that we would not be able to make it out tonight. I didn’t want to risk bottoming out again, so I offered to get out of the car and watch each time we came to a hump (which was often). Cade was mildly amused that I held my breath or hyperventilated each time we drove over one. After seemingly exhausting all other options, we decided we were going to have to return to the trailhead and try our luck going up the steep hill that we had come down on the way in. We were somewhat lost at this point, as we could not remember exactly how we got to where we were. We were using both Google Maps (which I had cached in my phone for offline use) and the built-in GPS in Cade’s car, as Google had some roads that the car’s GPS was missing, and vice versa. I had the trailhead marked in Google Maps, so we basically had to play “hot or cold” with two or three different roads before we were confident we were headed back in the right direction. It was dark by the time we got back to the location of the trailhead. We ended up making it up the hill without much trouble, meaning that our failed detour (and accompanying mental anguish) to avoid this hill had been for nothing. There were now a couple of pickup trucks at the overlook where we had stopped earlier, and they were having a campfire. We continued down the road, and Cade asked me to be thinking of a way to bend the support bar back into place so that it wouldn’t rub a hole in the exhaust pipe. I suggested tying a strap around it, tying the other end to a sturdy tree, and backing the car up to pull the metal back into place. We tried stopping at several different trees, but none were positioned correctly for this to work. We were finally able to do it using the metal post of a timber company gate. After this, it was a relatively smooth but long ride back to the paved road. There were no lights anywhere around, so we turned the car off along the way and took a moment to admire the stars. It was so dark and clear that we could see the arm of the Milky Way. We FINALLY reached the paved road around 10:30 PM, and it was smooth sailing back to Grass Valley from there. All the good restaurants were closed by the time we got back to town, so we had to go through the drive-thru at Jack-in-the-Box.
In summary, the section of the North Fork American River we explored today has an amazing set of swimming holes. I found out afterwards that this area is part of the National Wild and Scenic River system, and it’s easy to see why. The scenery is gorgeous, and I have yet to see a place with a more ideal jumping setup. I would say that the only thing that keeps this place from being a perfect 10 is the water temperature, but other than that, it basically looks like an island paradise hidden away in a rugged Sierra wilderness. I would say that today’s swimming holes have easily been my favorite so far, and this is the type of place I came to California to experience. Despite the difficulty of access, I would say the whole ordeal was very worth it (if Cade doesn’t end up experiencing subsequent car trouble due to the rough roads). That said, there is no way in HELL either of us would ever come back here with anything less than a high-clearance, four wheel drive vehicle. I definitely see paved roads in store for tomorrow’s outing.
