Dinkey Creek Campground
Jul. 30th, 2018 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flyminion
Today, Cade and I ended up checking out some swimming holes along Dinkey Creek in the Dinkey Creek Campground near Shaver Lake, California. I say “ended up” because that was not our original plan. When we first planned the trip, we had wanted to spend two days doing stuff in Yosemite, but since the park is closed due to the Ferguson Fire, and The Forks Resort where we are staying won’t excuse us from our full reservation (as per their stringent cancellation policy that apparently stays in effect regardless of extenuating circumstances), we were forced today to choose between eating the bill and checking out early, or sticking around and doing lame filler activities. I had one more swimming hole in the maybe-pile that seemed like it might be worthwhile: the Dinkey Creek Granite Pools. I thought they looked cool enough to be worth another long, winding drive to Shaver Lake, but Cade said he thought they looked dinky (not sure if the pun was intended).Well, after we drove nearly two hours to get there, we found that the road to the trail was being worked on and was impassable about two miles before the trailhead. They were installing a new culvert where a creek passed under the road, so that spot in the road was completely demolished at present. We parked at a campsite near the construction area and crossed a small stream (Rock Creek) to check out the view from the top of the hill. The area was mostly exposed granite, so it was easy to navigate. We could see down into the valley to the approximate location of the swimming holes, and we felt like we could get there eventually, but we weren’t sure how long it would take, and we were sort of concerned that no one would know where we were in case something happened. It was already after 2:30 PM, so we headed back down to the road.
We stopped on the way out to quickly check out a point of interest I had marked after scanning Rock Creek on Google Earth.
We scrambled about halfway down the hill from a large pulloff/camping area along the road, but it didn’t look terribly impressive from what we could see of it, and it looked like the climb back up to the road would suck, so we continued onward.
After going through Timothy Joyce’s Swimming Holes of California book prior to the trip, I had marked some other swimming holes further downstream on Dinkey Creek at the Dinkey Creek Campground. I hadn’t deemed them worthy of a special trip, but we were to the point of needing a backup-backup plan in our current vicinity and didn’t have the time to go elsewhere, so Dinkey Creek Campground it was. We had to pay a $10 day use fee to get in. The swimming holes Timothy Joyce mentions in his book (in order from downstream to upstream) are the Honeymoon Pool, a cliff jumping spot, the slicks, and three or four more pools upstream.
We drove to the end of the campground, passing up the Honeymoon Pool (which we assumed would be crowded) and heading straight for the cliff jumping spot, which was just behind the parking lot. In this area, there was a deep pool between two rock walls, with the wall on the river-right offering jumping opportunities from about 15-20 feet.
A woman who was there told us we needed to check out the Honeymoon Pool and showed us pictures of it on her phone. We asked if it was crowded, and she said no. I was about to snorkel the cliff jumping area to check the depth, but then a carload of kids with tubes showed up, so we decided to check out the upstream pools and come back here later.
We walked past the slicks, which was a shallow area with a small slide where some families were playing.
There was a pool beneath a rock wall, but it didn’t look deep enough for jumping.
We rock-hopped our way up the creek a short distance to a fairly deep-looking pool (I’ll call it Hole #4), but it didn’t have many deep spots near where the cliffs were.
After this point, we stayed high along the sloping rock wall that bordered the creek on the river left side.
We came down closer to the creek when we saw another potential swimming hole (I’ll call it Hole #5). It was slightly difficult to work our way down to the creek from here, and we ended up on the rocks at the upstream end of the pool.
From here, we stayed near creek level and rock-hopped our way up to a point where it would have been difficult to proceed further without rock-climbing (I'll call it Hole #6).
Timothy Joyce mentions a swimming hole at this area, but the pool only appeared to be a few feet deep at today’s water level.
We turned back and went downstream to Hole #5. Cade didn’t have much trouble descending the rocks here, but I had somewhat of a struggle getting down. It had been overcast all afternoon (legit clouds, not just smoke), and it started to sprinkle a little at this point. When I finally got down to the creek, I took the temperature with my thermometer (70.5 °F). I looked into the water with my mask and snorkel without getting in, and the water only looked about 6 feet deep at the deepest point.
We made our way back to Hole #4 in hopes of swimming there, but a couple of kids had shown up with fishing poles, so we moved along so as not to disturb the fish. We walked back down past the slicks to the cliff jumping spot. There was no one there, so I snorkeled it to check the depth. It was probably about 12 feet deep in the landing area, although there were some sections of rock that were raised. I went to the top of the cliff and contemplated jumping, but I was cold, the sun wasn’t out, and the water looked dark and uninviting, so I decided not to.
I wanted to check out the Honeymoon Pool, and I was thinking we would drive there, but Cade asked if I wanted to walk down the river instead.
I agreed, but this ended up being more of a pain than taking the road would have been (I was pretty tired of steep rock slabs and boulder-hopping by this point).
The Honeymoon Pool was the largest and deepest of the pools we had seen, but it didn’t have any good jumping opportunities.
I snorkeled it, and I would say it was about 15 feet deep at its deepest point. The smaller pool just upstream of it was about eight feet deep in a couple of places.
This pool had stairs leading down to it, so I climbed them, and we walked up the road to the car. After I changed, we drove back to Shaver Lake and got burgers and fries at the Hungry Hut (we tried to go back to the Pub N Grub, but they said it would be an hour wait for food due to the crowd). Hungry Hut had amazing fries; they were just like Pal’s fries (a regional fast food chain in southwest VA/Northeast TN that I mentioned in a previous entry).
After we ate, we once again did the annoyingly long and curvy drive back to Bass Lake.
In summary, Cade and I both thought today was pretty lame and a waste of a vacation day. Incidentally, this is the fifth day of our trip, and a similar situation happened on day 5 of last year’s trip (the road was closed to the place we originally wanted to go, and we ended up being disappointed by our backup plan). The Dinkey Creek campground had a couple of nice pools and a good jumping spot, but, as I expected, they weren’t really the type of swimming holes that were worth making a special trip for (especially not a nearly two-hour drive when we only had a week’s worth of vacation days). On top of that, the weather was overcast, which made getting out of the water after swimming chilly and unpleasant. If I had known today was going to turn out like it did, I probably would have just forfeited the money for our last night at The Forks so that we could have headed north and had an extra day to re-visit some of our favorite swimming holes from last year’s trip. I would like to take another shot at the Dinkey Creek Granite Pools if I ever find myself back in the Shaver Lake area, because I am kind of curious about what we missed out on.
