Candy Rock & Blue Streak

[flyminion]

For the seventh and final day of our California swimming hole marathon, Cade and I went to Candy Rock and Blue Streak, two swimming holes about a mile apart on the North Fork Stanislaus River near Sonora, CA. When I first saw videos of Candy Rock, I thought it looked pretty sweet (pun sort of intended). It had been at the top of my list of swimming holes to visit in California, but I wasn’t sure if we were going to get to go when I was planning the trip because I had heard that the road was closed and the river was high. However, Cade went and checked it out about three weeks ago and said the road was still open to foot traffic; it would just add an extra 2.5 miles to the hike. Candy Rock is apparently a pretty popular and well-known spot, so I was hoping the extra hike combined with the fact that it was a Friday would deter the crowds. Cade said that he thought Candy Rock was a bit overhyped, but he had not checked out Blue Streak when he first visited, so that was his main objective for the day. I had initially thought Candy Rock would be the highlight, but given that Lemke’s Lagoon on the South Yuba River had been our favorite swimming hole so far, we now both had higher hopes for Blue Streak, since Blue Streak looked to be more similar to Lemke’s Lagoon than Candy Rock.

There were no other cars there when we got to the parking area where the road was gated off. A sign on the gate said that the road was open to foot traffic, horses (I think), and bicycles. It said that the hike to Candy Rock was 2.5 miles. The road started off along the rim of a gorge about 600 feet deep.



The creek in the first gorge we were following was Mill Creek. I had scanned this creek on Google Earth and seen several potential waterfalls and swimming holes, but there was no obvious access to them. I looked down into the gorge from several vantage points along the road to see if I could see anything. I saw partial view of a couple of waterfalls, but the trees blocked the view of most of the creek.



The road then rounded the corner and followed the North Fork Stanislaus River from high above. The temperatures were in the 90’s, which wasn’t bad at first because there was a stiff breeze, but the hill blocked the breeze when we rounded the corner, so it got a tad miserable after that. We came to the trailhead for Blue Streak about 1.6 miles from the gate, but I said I wanted to pass it and hit it on the way back, because I had a feeling that we would end up not going to Candy Rock if we went to Blue Streak first. After passing the Blue Streak trail, the road descended more sharply. At first glance, it was hard to see why the road was closed, because it appeared fine. However, some areas were undercut, which could cause the road to give way under the weight of a vehicle.



The road continued until it ended in a circular parking area. From here, there was a short trail down to the river. The entire hike from the road gate to Candy Rock was about 3.4 miles, according to my fitness tracker. Candy Rock featured a huge boulder the size of a house perched above a large tub-style swimming hole fed by a waterfall about 10-15 feet high.

Watch on YouTube

Someone had left a garden hose on the sloped rocks next to the waterfall so that the area could be wet and used as a slide. There appeared to be at least one pool just above the main swimming hole, but I didn’t check out the depth.



There were a couple more smaller tubs just downstream of the main swimming hole.



I was so hot that I had sweat and sunscreen running into my eyes and irritating my contacts, so I immediately ditched my stuff and slid into the water when I got to the edge of the tub. It was 67 °F, the same as God’s Bath yesterday. I tried to check out the main swimming hole with my snorkel, but I was intimidated by the circular current created by the waterfall. The hole looked at least 10-15 feet deep all around, and I couldn’t see the bottom beneath the waterfall area. I then went downstream to the other, smaller tubs. Cade had jumped from the cliffs into one of these tubs the last time he was here, but the water was now a couple of feet lower. The tubs were still about 8-10 feet deep, but I didn’t want to jump into them, especially since it seemed like Blue Streak would have plenty of jumping opportunities. We went back up to the main swimming hole and contemplated sliding, but it looked a little sketchy, and we both wanted to see someone else do it first. However, we had the place to ourselves, so there were no opportunities to watch and learn from the locals. Cade went on top of the huge boulder perched above the main pool to see if he wanted to jump from it, but rationality got the better of him, and he decided not to try it today.

Candy Rock had struck me as a distinctly Californian swimming hole when I was researching it, but after seeing it in person, I thought it seemed like something you might find on Steels Creek in North Carolina (Steels Creek Falls also has tubs and features a balanced boulder over a deep pool of similar diameter), although Steels Creek is a bit more spectacular than Candy Rock, in my opinion. Here is a side-by-side comparison (the second photo is Steels Creek Falls):



We decided it was time to have a snack and then continue to Blue Streak. I ate this sour fruit rollup thing I bought yesterday at a candy store in Sonora, mainly for the novelty of eating some candy at Candy Rock.



From studying Google Earth, it looked like the Blue Streak trail continued upstream past Blue Streak and met the river less than half a mile downstream of Candy Rock. We decided it would be easier to just rock-hop downstream and pick up the trail than to backtrack to the road and hike all the way back down again. I opted to wear my Vibram toe shoes for this portion of the hike, as the rocks along the river were slick as hell even when dry, and my Vibrams tend to have better grip than my hiking boots. After working our way downstream, we found the trail and picked it up. It had these weird little pitfalls that I kept stepping into with my heels. The trail stayed at river level for most of the way, but then it started climbing. We saw a side trail going back down to the river, but we were still a little ways upstream from Blue Streak. Cade wanted to take this trail, but I said I had seen another side trail on Google Earth that looked more direct. Unfortunately, you can’t always get a good idea of the steepness from Google Earth. The main trail climbed significantly before we reached the direct side trail, and when I say “direct”, I mean that whoever made this trail apparently had no patience for switchbacks. The trail was basically just a long, steep slide. Fortunately, it was lined with enough small trees to grab onto on the way down. There was also a part where we had to hug a small cliff on the uphill side of the trail to keep from slipping off the edge and going tumbling down the steep bank. There was also a rope at one point, but it was only about half as long as it needed to be. The entire trail consisted of loose dust, which made it that much more treacherous. We managed to make it down to the swimming hole unscathed.

Unlike Candy Rock, Blue Streak was a huge pool.



It was fed by a small but picturesque “I can’t believe it’s not landscaped” style waterfall about eight feet high.



Contrary to the name of the pool, the water was not blue (although a video by Los Angeles Swimmin suggests the name “Blue Streak” is actually a reference to the vertical blue-gray ‘streaks’ in the rock on the river-left side of the waterfall).



The water was clear but had a dark tint to it, much like the swimming holes of the Wilson Creek Area (to which the aforementioned Steels Creek belongs) back in North Carolina. In fact, if you ignored the background scenery and just looked at the swimming hole, it actually looked like something you would find in North Carolina, although I have yet to find a place in North Carolina with quite as tasty a buffet of (non-sketchy) jumping options in a single swimming hole. The water at Blue Streak looked blue in the pictures I had seen, but those may have been taken at lower flows. According to the flow rates from the past three years, the river is a little higher this year than it was in 2015-16. The aesthetic of the whole place sort of reminded me a of a pirate lagoon at a waterpark.

The river-left side of the pool was lined with cliffs and boulders that offered various jumping heights up to 30-40 feet.

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Cade immediately jumped into the water from the cliff where we were standing on the river-right side. I think this was the first time I had seen him do that without easing in first. I almost followed, but jumping from this particular rock required leaping out to clear rocks beneath the launch pad, which I won’t do. We both snorkeled around the pool for a while. It looked super deep all around, but my depth finder said it was only 20 feet at the deepest point. We also found some underwater passageways beneath the boulders on the river-left side.



It was deep all around these boulders with almost no obstructions, so we climbed out of the water and jumped. I jumped from about 10-12 feet, and getting out onto the rock that I jumped from (the 'tilted' boulder on the left in the above picture) was pretty sketchy because it was smooth and slick with nothing really to hold onto. If you slipped off the wrong side of it, you would drop into the space between the rocks and land on a pile of shallowly submerged rocks. Cade jumped from the highest point, which I would say was between 30-40 feet high. It looked like you could swim behind the waterfall, so I tried it, but it was taking too much energy to try to get back there. I was wearing the mask and snorkel as I tried this, but I was getting more and more winded as water pelted me in the face, which sort of created the sensation of suffocating. I gave it up and climbed back out onto the rocks to rest for a while. We jumped a few more times (I even jumped off the waterfall once) and we both made a failed attempt to get behind the waterfall. After we got out of the water to dry off for good, I said I was not going to start hiking out of here until the sun had set behind the hillside. As we were packing up, I was debating on whether to take a picture of the cairns on the downstream end of the pool. I have this weird conviction that re-living an experience through writing or photos detracts from my ability to rely on my memory (i.e., did I actually remember something, or do I just think I did because the photo 'reminded' me?), so I thought about not taking any photos of the cairns so that at least one detail of the swimming hole would be left entirely to memory. In the end I decided not to overthink it and just snapped the picture.



We started hiking out just as the sun sank behind the hill. We had no desire to go out the way we came in, so we decided to look for the other side trail we passed on the way up. We found it just upstream from the waterfall and used it to get back to the main trail. It had a couple of scrambling spots, but it was nowhere near as bad as the first trail. The main trail back to the road wasn’t too bad, but Cade had to keep stopping because he had somehow hurt his shins earlier in the day. The trail wrapped around the hillside for a while, and then switchbacked up to the road. The trail from the river to the road was 1.4 miles, according to my fitness tracker. Once we were at the road, it was a long but fairly easy walk back to the car.

In summary, I would say Blue Streak turned out to be the highlight of today’s excursion, as expected. It seems to get less attention than Candy Rock, not because it sucks, but because it is more difficult to access. Candy Rock was okay, but I would have to agree with Cade that it is a bit overhyped. I think it gets glorified on social media because it’s low-hanging fruit (or at least it was before the road was closed), being only a short hike from the parking area. Also, Candy Rock is a bit more interesting from a geological standpoint, which makes it more visually attractive. If we had been able to drive all the way to it, then I might have thought more highly of it (although it probably would have been crowded), but I’m not sure I’d say it’s worth a three-mile hike. Don’t get me wrong; it’s a worthy daytrip destination if you live within driving distance, but I don’t think Candy Rock is really worth flying across the country on its own merit. Luckily, Candy Rock has Blue Streak to back it up, so it’s still worth visiting if you combine the two into a package deal and consider Candy Rock as an appetizer before the main course (i.e., Blue Streak). It would take a pretty tough crowd of swimming hole goers to find Blue Streak disappointing. Blue Streak had pretty much everything one could want in a swimming hole, although it didn’t quite stack up to the South Yuba River on account of the dark water. If Blue Streak had water like the Yuba, then it easily would have been the number one swimming hole of the trip.
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As I said in my first entry of this trip, the main reason I chose California for this year’s swimming hole vacation was the weather, and it was pretty reliably warm and dry everywhere we went. Some of the swimming holes were a bit chilly, but most had sun-heated rocks to warm up on. I’m not sure how I would say that California swimming holes compare to southeastern swimming holes, as both sides have some pretty good ones, but I think California definitely wins the favorable weather award. On this trip, we mostly focused on the area north of Yosemite to just north of Lake Tahoe. We cleared all but one of the swimming holes in that region that I really wanted to see (the loose end being Seven Falls in the Feather River basin). Two things we sort of missed out on for this trip were a good natural water slide and some good pothole-style swimming holes. Curtain Falls sort of had a sliding waterfall, but the flow was a bit high to go down all the way from the top on the day we visited. God’s Bath and Candy Rock were sort of pothole/tub style pools, but I was hoping more for the exquisite teacup-style potholes like those found at Steels Creek Falls in North Carolina. When I was researching California swimming holes, it looked like most of the good slides and teacups were in the Yosemite and Sequoia areas. We had originally planned to spend a couple of days in Yosemite on this trip, but we ended up blowing it off due to no budget-friendly accommodations being available on short notice. I plan to concentrate my efforts in Yosemite and Sequoia on my next swimming-hole-centric trip to California. Cade also has a thing for Big Sur, so it’s possible we could make an appearance there. Big Sur has some gorgeous but obscure Hawaiian-looking swimming holes, so it’s possible I could be enticed to go there if I can find one that doesn’t involve a backpacking trip (or, by some unexpected twist, I get into backpacking).

For this year’s trip, though, this is how I would rank the swimming holes we visited:

1. Lemke’s Lagoon on the South Yuba River:

For me, this was the best all-around swimming hole. It had clear blue water, safe jumps up to 20-25 feet into deep water, comfortable water temperatures in the mid-70’s, and a moderate hike that is strenuous enough to deter large crowds but not so intense that it detracts from the experience.


2. North Fork American River:

If I were ranking based on the overall destination rather than the swimming hole per se, then this would have been #1. This was easily the most spectacular swimming hole in terms of scenery; the views here rival what one could see at iconic national parks such as Glacier and Yosemite, and the water is crystal clear. I would say it was also the top 'adventure hike' of the trip. There were “safe” jumping options (i.e., deep water directly below the cliff with no obstacles to clear) pretty much anywhere from five feet to fifty feet or higher, and the aesthetic here blows the South Yuba River out of the water. Why then did it not top the list? Because it’s FREAKING COLD. The water temperature was in the mid 50’s in August, so this was more of a jump in and jump out type of swimming hole. If the water had been in the mid 60’s or higher, this one would EASILY have topped the list, no question.


3. God’s Bath:

I think this one wins the award for the coolest and most photogenic pool. I always love a good rock tub, so what’s not to love about a figure-eight rock tub with crystal clear water, jumping options, a rope swing, a cool pothole with an underwater passage, warm rocks to sun on, and a short approach to boot? I guess the water could stand to be a few degrees warmer, but other than that, I have no complaints.


4. Blue Streak:

When it comes down to it, I guess Blue Streak is just another big pool on a creek, but as big pools on creeks go, it’s one of the best. Out of the swimming holes we visited on this trip, Blue Streak is second only to the North Fork American River in terms of jumping options. This one requires a fair amount of effort to reach when the road is closed, but the payoff is worth it.


5. Candy Rock:

Like I said, it’s ‘daytrip’ cool, but not ‘fly across the country’ cool.


6. Mountain Dog:

The song “My Favorite Mistake” by Sheryl Crow comes to mind for this one, since we ended up here by accident. This swimming hole was pretty average, nothing terribly special about it other than the characteristic clear water and moderate temperatures of the South Yuba River. At 76 °F, it was the warmest swimming hole we visited on this trip.


7. Island Lake:

Perhaps I’m biased, but I’ve never really seen an alpine lake and thought, “I want to get in that.” This was the only swimming hole of the trip where I had to wrap up in a towel upon getting out. The water temperature was on the cool side of moderate, and it was pretty windy, which made for a chilly experience. Additionally, all potential jumping spots were less than ideal because they had shallow water directly beneath them. We also hit Emerald Pools on the South Yuba River as a tacked-on ending to this excursion, but I won't rank Emerald Pools since I basically just looked at it without getting in (due to the sun having set and the water being in the low 50's). If I had more thoroughly explored Emerald Pools, I'm guessing I would have ranked them somewhere between North Fork American River and Blue Streak, depending on how much the cold water detracted from the enjoyability of swimming.


8. Curtain Falls:

This place looks like a real gem in pictures, but it's deceptively photogenic. The swimming hole by itself is okay, but when you factor in the hot bug-filled hike, bouldering, and swimming required to get there (and get back), it’s hard to decide if the payoff is really worth the effort (it probably is, at slightly lower water flows). The swimming hole has a jump and a slide, but both where compromised by the high flow when we visited. I might be impressed to find something like this in North Carolina, but in California you can do better. Granted, this excursion was a backup plan for Seven Falls, so I may have set my expectations too high.


Now that we have reached the end of this year’s trip, I will say that I consider it a much bigger success than last year’s trip to Georgia. That time, five out of six of our excursions were unsatisfactory (in my opinion) due to rain-swollen rivers and/or the swimming holes being subpar. We hit swimming holes for seven days in a row this year, and I would say at least five of those excursions were satisfactory or better. Some of the places we went had an abundance of great jumping opportunities, which allowed me to improve my jumping confidence, which has waned over the past decade. Also, I think my trekking poles really helped this year. I used them on almost every hike, and my knees are not sore at all (as opposed to last year when they were angry for months after the trip).

Well, I guess that about wraps things up for this adventure. I may end up hitting another Appalachian swimming hole or two before the end of the summer, and I have plans to go to Havasupai soon, so I’m hoping this continues to be a productive swimming hole year despite the slow start.