Wilson Creek Trail
Aug. 26th, 2018 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flyminion
After checking out most of what the Wilson Creek area has to offer by the end of 2016, I thought I was going to have to start looking elsewhere for new swimming holes less than a four hour drive from Raleigh. This past winter, I was looking at my National Geographic map of the Linville Gorge area and saw that there was a Wilson Creek Trail. I had heard of this before but always assumed that it ran through Wilson Creek Gorge, which I am already familiar with. However, the map showed the trail running through a different section of the creek further upstream from the gorge. I couldn’t find much information online about the trail aside from a stray picture or two that showed a typical cobblestone creek. I did find a fishing video or two that showed crystal clear pools along upper Wilson Creek, which gave me hope that there could be some nice swimming holes here, despite the scenery not being as dramatic as in the Wilson Creek Gorge. Over the winter, I had scanned the upper section of Wilson Creek on Google Earth and marked thirteen points of interest (POIs) that looked like possible swimming holes. As I mentioned in my entry on Little Wilson Creek, I found out via Kevin Adams’ North Carolina Waterfalls book about a guide book called The Linville Gorge and Wilson Creek Hikers Guide: An Introduction by Allen T. Hyde. Hyde’s book didn’t make much mention of swimming holes along the trail, but it contained quite a bit of useful info about his experience on the trail and how to navigate it (including GPS waypoints).This was one of those excursions that I didn’t want to do alone because it sounded pretty secluded, plus it was too long for an out-and-back hike (for me), so I would either need a shuttle or a hiking partner with a vehicle so that we could leave cars at both ends of the trail. I also needed someone who enjoys hiking for the sake of hiking, because most people I know would probably want to beat my ass for dragging them on a seven-mile hike that may or may not include anything worth seeing.
Brian slept on the floor of my motel room after yesterday’s excursion and was up for another hike today. Since he was still around and had expressed interest in the Wilson Creek Trail when I had brought it up yesterday, I thought this would be a good chance to knock it out. There was a 60 percent chance of rain today, but unlike yesterday, the Wilson Creek Trail didn’t sound terribly treacherous from what I knew of it (just long), so it wouldn’t really matter if the ground got wet.
After we ate breakfast, we drove out to where the gravel Edgemont Road meets 221 and proceeded down Edgemont Road. This is the road I had taken to get to Little Wilson Creek this past spring. There had been some flooding since I was here last, so I was unsure how far I would be able to get in my Camry. We decided I would park my car at the northern terminus of the Wilson Creek Trail (closer to the paved road), and then we would take Brian’s car, which had high clearance and four wheel drive, to the southern terminus to see if it looked like my car would be able to make it (since I would have to drive Brian back to his car after the hike). There were a few ruts and one area with some rocks sticking up, but it looked manageable. However, just beyond the southern trailhead was a rut in the road that I would not be able to cross (which was also the case at the northern trailhead), so it was a good thing the trail started where it did. We got started around 11:30 AM.
There was a sign for the trail (Trail 258) saying that it was 6 miles, and that it had been adopted by the Little Lost Hikers. Hyde says in his book that it can be difficult to find in places, but it looked like someone had gone through recently and blazed almost the entire trail with pink blazes and pink/orange flagging tape. Despite the recent maintenance and blazing efforts, Hyde’s book and the GPS waypoints made this hike much easier, as his book includes several side trails that are not listed on some maps, which we may have mistaken for the main trail if we hadn’t been aware of them. Just to describe the trail in a nutshell: It started off well up the hill from the creek, and the trail was pretty obvious; it looked like there had been some pruning done within the past month or so. The trail got down to the creek probably about 1.5 miles in and stayed close to the creek for most of the way, occasionally going a little ways up the hill and coming back down again. The trail was just a faint path through the ferns when it was in the floodplain of the creek, but it was pretty well flagged. The final 1.5 miles or so headed uphill away from the creek and joined with an old logging road, which led back to the northern terminus of the trail. I think there were six creek crossings, most of which were in the upstream end, and most of them were difficult or impossible to do without getting your feet wet. Also, I was taking out spider webs with my face the entire time, so my head basically had a cocoon of spider webs at all times. I kept noticing that my backpack seemed annoyingly heavy, and then I realized about a mile or two into the hike that I had forgotten to take my ropes out after yesterday’s excursion, so I would have to haul them with me for the duration of the hike.
Now that I’ve described the trail, I’ll get to the points of interest (POIs). Normally when I do entries where I explore pre-selected POIs, I’ll include screen captures of what they looked like on Google Earth. I’m not including those this time because this entry already has a lot of pictures, and because the POIs don’t look terribly interesting on Google Earth (just broad or dark spots in the creek).
POI 1 was before the trail got down to creek level, so we had to bushwhack a short distance down the hill to get to it. Along the way, we crossed a path that looked pretty well used, indicating that there is probably an easier approach to this pool than the Wilson Creek Trail. Of all the POIs I had picked out on Google Earth, POI 1 seemed like the most likely to be a legit swimming hole. It turned out to be a large pool that looked to be pretty deep near the upstream end. It had a sandy beach along the river-right side, and sloped rocks along the river-left side.
I took a reading with my thermometer, and the water was 63.5 °F, which is pretty typical for creeks in the area. I snorkeled the pool, and it looked to be about 12 feet deep at its deepest point.
It also had huge fish swimming around in it (see the video). Brian briefly jumped into this one, but he didn’t stay in long. As expected, POI 1 ended up being a legit swimming hole. It didn’t have a jump or anything, but it had a few overhanging trees that created the possibility for a rope swing. I’m guessing it’s a fairly well known fishing hole among the locals. We didn't see anyone there, but there was a cable along the rocks, and some footprints in the sand on the beachy side of the creek. We thought about following the more established path upstream to see where it went, but we didn’t know if there would be another clear-ish opportunity to get back up to the Wilson Creek Trail, so we opted to return to it from here.
We got to POI 2 shortly after the trail reached creek level.
This pool looked like it may or may not be over my head. Even if it was, it didn’t look like anything remarkable. I knew if I wanted to have time to investigate all of my POIs that I wouldn’t have time to get into each one of them, and I still had my hiking boots on at this point, so I skipped checking out POI 2.
The first creek crossing was shortly after POI 2, and it didn’t look doable for dry feet, so I changed into my Vibram toe shoes to give myself the power to walk through water.
POI 3 was next:
I was unable to judge the depth from above the water, so I snorkeled it. When I stood on the bottom at the deepest point and put my hands over my head, my fingers could not reach the top of the water, meaning the pool was probably about 8 feet deep. Again, there were no extras here, but it did look like there were some ideal trees for putting up a rope swing.
We crossed the creek again sometime between POI 3 and POI 4. POI 4 was more of a stretch of interest than a single point. It ended up having three pools, one right after the other.
POI 4a:
POI 4b:
POI 4c:
I was not tempted to get into any of these, so we kept going. Here is a cascade we passed somewhere between POIs 4 and 5:
The trail started going up and away from the creek and bypassed POI 5 from above, so we had to backtrack a little and walk along the shore to get to it.
This was another that didn’t look remarkable (it looked very similar to POI 4c), so I didn’t get in.
POI 6 piqued my interest, because it looked like it might have a tenuous jump.
I snorkeled it, but it was only about 6 feet deep at its deepest point.
POI 7 was a similar story. I didn’t actually go into POI 7, but I stood on the edge and put my face in the water with my mask on, and it looked only 4-5 feet deep.
Just before POI 8, the trail started veering away from the creek and didn’t look like it would be returning anytime soon, so we took a faint side path and found a primitive campsite. POI 8 was next to the campsite and looked to be the most likely of the pools we had seen so far to have a decent jumping rock.
I went in and tested the depth. At the deepest point, my fingertips stuck out of the water when I stood on the bottom and put my arms up, and there was only one spot where the water was this deep, so jumping here looked like a no-go (although I’m sure people confident in their shallow water jumping abilities would probably do it).
Rather than return to the trail after POI 8, we walked up the creek a short distance (although we had to maneuver around a fair amount of deadfall) to POI 9:
POI 9 didn’t turn out to be anything interesting, and it didn’t look deep, so I didn’t go in.
Just upstream of POI 9, Flat Laurel Branch flowed in to Wilson Creek, so we walked up it a short distance (which was pretty easy) and picked up the trail again. It went by a cabin, which we thought would be abandoned and rotting, but it was actually in good shape.
It looked like it might be someone’s hunting cabin, but there were no signs indicating that it was private property.
We followed the trail upstream from here and crossed the creek. A little ways upstream of the crossing was POI 10.
We were probably going to have to blow off POIs 11-13 (which are not conveniently accessible from the trail) to save time, so POI 10 would likely be the last swimming hole of the day. Brian and I both got in. It was just under 6 feet at its deepest point (it was about up to my eyes when I stood on the bottom).
Upstream of POI 10, the trail crossed Stack Rock Creek at its confluence with Wilson Creek. Wilson Creek got smaller and more cascade-y as we headed upstream.
We crossed three or four more times. At the last crossing, we saw a dog coming down the hill from the other side of the creek, and then its owner came down. This was the first person we had seen all day. We had a brief conversation with him. He said he was new and hadn’t done this trail before and wanted to know if we had done the whole thing. We said yes, and he said he was planning on camping here tonight. There was a small pool at this spot. It was pretty, but it didn’t look deep enough to be worth entering.
We asked the guy if there were any more creek crossings, and he said no, so I changed back into my hiking boots. We continued upstream and came to a large campsite, which was supposed to be adjacent to a pool that Hyde refers to as the Emerald Pool in his book. We found it up a short side path from the campsite.
The Emerald Pool looked like it might be deep enough to be over my head, but I had already put my shoes back on, so I wasn’t getting in this one. There were also some small pools in the cascades just above the falls (see the video).
From here, the trail left the creek and went up the hill. It joined with the logging road, and we followed the logging road back to my car. We got there around 7 PM or maybe a little after. Brian had tracked the hike, and he said it was eight-point-something miles including the side detours. Despite there being a 60 percent chance of rain, it never rained on us the entire day (although it looked like it might at some points).
After doing a gazillion point turn to get my car turned around, I drove Brian the 30 minutes to his car (successfully navigating the obstacles with my car), and then we drove another 30 minutes to get back to 221. We took Pilot Ridge Road (paved) out this time instead of following Edgemont Road all the way. I’m not necessarily going to say it was any easier than Edgemont Road, as Pilot Road had some pretty bad hairpin turns that kind of negated the points it would have earned for being paved. It was dark by the time I got back to 221. It was a long, agonizing drive back to Greensboro. I finally got back around 11:30 PM.
In summary, the Wilson Creek Trail is a nice, secluded hike along a mostly uneventful section of the creek. The crystal clear pools here are pretty and offer frequent opportunities to cool off during a long hike, but they don’t really compare to the swimming holes and scenery that can be found downstream in the Wilson Creek Gorge. The only drawback to Wilson Creek Gorge is that it’s right off the road, so it’s inevitably crowded. While the Wilson Creek Trail didn’t exactly have any “destination swimming holes”, the pools here offer a more secluded alternative to popular places like Wilson Creek Gorge, Upper Creek Falls, Harper Creek Falls, and Gragg Prong, and without the treachery of other secluded places like Steels Creek. Overall, the best pools were concentrated on the downstream half of the trail. I would say POI 1 was the best swimming hole, followed by POI 3. Neither of these offered any bonus features (like a jump or a slide), but both had trees that could be conducive to putting up a rope swing. POI 8 had a serviceable low jumping opportunity for confident shallow water jumpers, but I wasn’t confident enough to try it. POI 8 also had a campsite next to it, and if I were into camping, I would say this was the best campsite location on the entire trail. POIs 6,7, and 10 were about 5-6 feet deep, but I wouldn't really consider them to be legit swimming holes. I didn't get into the water at POIs 2, 4, 5, and 9, so I can't say whether or not those were legit swimming holes (9 almost certainly wasn't). Despite the downstream end of the creek having bigger pools, I thought the upstream end of the creek (upstream of the Stack Rock Creek confluence) was more intriguing. The downstream area was mainly a flat-ish cobblestone creek with an occasional pool, but the upstream end was starting to turn into cascades over large rock slabs that could produce crystal clear rock tub type swimming holes (it was starting to look like what I had hoped Little Wilson would be). It definitely had some Devil’s Fork-esque appeal. I do intend to pick up where I left off at some point, as we only got to 10 of the 13 POIs that I had marked. Unfortunately, the trail left the creek between POIs 10 and 11, so exploration of POIs 11-13 would require a creek walk, which we did not have time for today. We saw some pretty nice small pools in the upstream cascade area that weren’t even visible on Google Earth, so I’m intrigued to get back down there and check out the ones that are actually big enough to show up on the satellite imagery. I'm going to go ahead and say "To Be Continued" for upper Wilson Creek.
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Update: We returned in 2019 and checked out the remaining POIs. Click here for the trip report.
