![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flyminion
Cade and I slept in this morning after our exhausting ordeal last night. After stopping for breakfast, we arrived at the bridge at about a quarter till 1 PM. The parking lot was full, and we had to park along the road.
The pools below the bridge looked tempting, but we decided to hike all the way to Lemke’s Lagoon and hit other potential highlights on the way back. We saw many gorgeous-looking pools from the trail, but I didn’t stop to take pictures of all of them, because that would have taken forever. Cathedral was the first point of interest that we came to after leaving the bridge, but we couldn’t really see it from the trail, so we decided we would check it out on the way back. Next, we came to Hoyt’s Crossing. Timothy Joyce mentions that this area is clothing-optional in his book, which I took with a grain of salt since he said the same thing about Mountain Dog, which definitely seemed family friendly. However, the sign at Hoyt’s Crossing seemed to corroborate that this was an official(ish) nude beach.
Hoyt’s Crossing contains a couple of large pools with a beach where the river makes a sharp turn, and upstream from the pools was a long, wide rock chute that people were swimming in.
Most people were wearing swimsuits, but we did see at least one topless woman and another fully nude sunbather on the rocks. From Hoyt’s Crossing, Timothy Joyce’s directions say to take the middle trail to continue to Lemke’s Lagoon. There were several trails converging on the area, and some of those trails had additional forks, so it was hard to tell exactly which trail was the “middle” one. The directions said something about taking the trail that goes high, but not too high. Each time we came to a fork, we tried to take the one that seemed like it would bypass lower obstacles without taking us too far up the hill. Before long, we could see Lemke’s Lagoon in the distance.
We reached it about 1.7 miles into the hike. We took a side trail down to the lagoon, which required what Timothy Joyce calls a “third class scramble” down the rocks. The rocks were almost as smooth as glass, which made it difficult to get traction. At one point, there was a steel cable tied around a tree to help with the descent.
My phone's camera did a piss-poor job of capturing the clarity of the water here. The fourth photo below and the underwater clip from the video are from Cade's phone and give a more accurate representation of what the water looked like in person.
I was pretty hot by the time we reached the swimming hole, so I didn’t waste any time throwing my stuff down and jumping in. The water was a comfortable 74 degrees. The river-right side of the upstream end of the pool was lined with a cliff that offered varying jumping heights up to about 25 feet.
I scoped out the pool with my diving mask to check the depth. Most of the area beneath the cliffs looked at least 15 feet or deeper. The lowest jump was about six feet high, and the next highest jump was about 10-12 feet high. I was eyeing the medium jump from the water because I thought it looked relatively low. I remember thinking, “I’m going to go jump off that low jump that’s not going to look so low when I get up there.”
I was going to jump off it without overthinking it as soon as I got up on the rock, but I made the mistake of looking straight down first, which caused me to hesitate and subsequently chicken out for the time being. I opted for the low jump instead. I was feeling slightly nauseous from eating a big breakfast and then doing a hot hike, so I decided to lie down on the rocks for a while. After I was feeling better, I jumped a few times from the low jump to practice my form for the medium jump. Cade jumped from the highest point, which was probably 20-25 feet. There was a group of teens and/or college students there, and they were recording videos of each other jumping from various heights. They were hanging out on the launch pad for the medium jump, and I didn’t want the pressure of people waiting on me, so I hung out on the rocks for a while until they migrated to the sloped rocks across the river. I probably took over an hour psyching myself for the medium jump. This would not have been a problem for me in my younger years, but it has been at least a decade since I have jumped off anything over ten feet high (save for one attempt in 2014 to jump out of a tree at Eno Quarry in which I landed wrong, resulting in a large cut on my forehead and what felt like the worst ass-whipping of my life), so needless to say my jumping confidence has not been high in recent years. I chickened out a few times and did the low jump instead. I didn’t really want to do the medium jump, but it was pretty much the perfect jump for me (high enough that it looks a little scary, but low enough to where it wouldn’t hurt if I didn’t nail the landing, and deep water everywhere with no hazardous objects to avoid), so I knew I would regret not doing it. The group on the other side of the river saw that I was considering it and started pressuring me to do it. The more I stood up there, the hotter I got and the more refreshing the water looked, so I finally leapt off the edge and did a pencil (photos and video by Cade):
It ended up being pretty refreshing, so I did it a few more times. Cade and I both jumped in numerous times. We also swam around with the diving mask (which is unfortunately missing its snorkel at present), and lounged on the warm rocks. Underwater photos by Cade:
We headed out around 5 PM. Cade was done swimming for the day, but I still wanted to check out Cathedral and the swimming hole at the bridge. The sun had sunk behind the mountain by the time we reached Cathedral.
The current in this pool was somewhat swift. There appeared to be some jumping opportunities, but the water below the cliffs was probably only 8-10 feet deep with various rocks sticking up, so I decided not to try jumping here.
We went back to the bridge. From above, it looked like there might be some boulders in the middle of the pool that one could jump from. However, after going down to the river and scoping out the depth, it looked like there were too many submerged rocks in the way of any good jumps.
This pool was about 15-20 feet deep at its deepest point, but this was not near any of the possible jumping spots. I will say that this pool was more interesting underwater than Lemke's Lagoon or Cathedral. The piles of large boulders seen on the shores of the river continued underwater, and there were many nooks and crannies that had fish swimming around inside them.
It was after 7 PM by this point, and I figured Cade was probably getting tired of waiting on me, so I got out, and we drove back to town to get some dinner.
In summary, I would say that the section of South Yuba River we explored today, particularly Lemke’s Lagoon, has been the best all-around swimming hole so far this trip. I would still say that the North Fork American River yesterday has been the most spectacular so far from an aesthetic standpoint, and while Lemke’s Lagoon doesn’t have a majestic waterfall or quite as epic of a backdrop, it is much more hospitable for swimming while offering many of the same “functional” elements (warm flat rocks, quality jumping opportunities, clear water for snorkeling) and enough visual appeal to boost itself into being top-shelf swimming hole material. I definitely made no mistakes placing this one in my top three must-see swimming holes for this trip.
