Seven Falls

[flyminion]

For the third day of our 2019 California swimming hole marathon, Cade and I went to Seven Falls on one of the many branches of the forks of the Feather River near, well, nothing. I guess as the crow flies it was sort of near Oroville. Seven Falls was originally supposed to be day 5 of our first California swimming hole marathon in 2017, but the road was closed, so we ended up doing Curtain Falls as a backup plan, and we didn’t make it this far north in 2018, so we had to wait until this year for retribution. I was interested to see how Seven Falls stacked up to Curtain Falls, since I wasn’t a huge fan of the Curtain Falls experience (although Cade enjoyed the hike and the scenery of Bald Rock Dome). We actually saw Bald Rock Dome from a distance while driving out to Seven Falls today.

The drive from Chico was two hours. I had originally planned to stay in Oroville to shave 30 minutes off the drive, but we couldn’t find any reasonably priced accommodations there on short notice. The latter half of the trip was an hour of driving on twenty miles worth of desolate forest service roads. The road was actually paved for all but the last two miles, although it was a one-lane blacktop road with no lines and a healthy serving of potholes. The area was also heavily forested with large evergreens. The last two miles on the dirt road were pretty rough. It started off alright, but we quickly got to the deep ruts and rocks sticking up. We were able to navigate the obstacles in Cade’s medium-clearance SUV until we had about 0.3 miles to go and encountered some rocks sticking up that Cade didn’t want to attempt driving over. We parked and walked the rest of the way to the trailhead. We were surprised to see another vehicle parked there.

The trail down to the falls dropped around 1000 feet over about a mile, and it wasted no time with switchbacks. It was more or less a straight shot down the hill. I was trying to go as slow as I could without gaining so much forward momentum that I couldn’t stop, because there were a lot of steep slopes that one could fall down if they started sliding uncontrollably, which could happen easily given that the trail consisted of loose dust, and the rocks were all covered with loose pebbles and leaves. After a scramble that probably added ten years of age to my knees, we emerged at the river just downstream of the fourth waterfall.

Before I continue, I guess I should establish the layout of Seven Falls. The final five waterfalls are large and obvious, but there are several smaller falls upstream of the lower five, and it is unclear which two of them are considered part of the seven. I will refer to the falls in order from upstream to downstream. In other words, Fall 1 is the top waterfall, and Fall 7 is the bottom one.

Here is a drone flyover video (not mine) from the Next Gen Productions Youtube channel showing an aerial view of all the waterfalls:

Watch on YouTube

Now, where were we? Oh, right. Cade and I had just reached the river a short distance downstream of Fall 4, so we made our way to the base of it. Fall 4 was a wide, steep slide with several logs circulating around in the plunge pool.





The next waterfall up (Fall 3) was the one I was most interested in, so we crossed the river, and scrambled up the rocky hill on the river-left.



We worked our way along the rocks to the base of Fall 3.



There were three people there (two guys and a woman) about our age. At this point, I was super hot and drenched in sweat, so I decided to just get in without taking the temperature. Cade wanted to know the temperature, so I gave him my thermometer and told him not to tell me before I got in. I briefly got in, and it was pretty cold. It felt about like the swimming holes we visited yesterday, so I guessed that the temperature was 60 °F. It was actually 59.5 °F, but I was right if you round to the nearest degree. I quickly snorkeled the pool beneath a jumping opportunity where a fallen log provided access to a sloping rock about ten feet above the water.



The water looked at least 15 feet deep under the jumping spot, so I climbed up the log and jumped a couple of times (photo by Cade):



Cade normally refuses to get into water that is colder than the upper 60’s, but he jumped a couple of times and quickly exited. After about three jumps, my body was having trouble dealing with the juxtaposition of ice cold water and scorching hot air temperatures with the sun beating down, so I went to a shaded area to rest. However, the trio that had gotten there before us had already settled in this area and were having a conversation, and I felt like my presence there was kind of weird, so I crossed the river to look for shade on the other side while Cade lay out in the sun to warm up. One of the guys from the trio had also crossed the river. He said they had driven in from the opposite direction we had. I told him we had been trying to come here for the past three years, and he said he had also been trying to get up here for a while. He said someone he knew had run this stretch of the river in a kayak, and that there was at least one more waterfall about 50 feet high above this one. He started up the hill to get to the next waterfall. I had no plans to go farther up than Fall 3, but the hillside on the river-left where we were looked navigable, so I found myself continually going just a little farther up until I was at the top and working my way around the top of Fall 3.



It was a little sketchy in places, but not too bad. I still probably wouldn’t have done it if Cade and I had been the only people there.

The next waterfall up was only about ten feet high, so I’m not sure if it counted as Fall 2. It had a deep, boulder-filled plunge pool.



There was a partial view of two more waterfalls behind this one.



One article regards these three cascades as one triple waterfall, in which case they would collectively be Fall 2. I think I will be consistent with that article, so the bottom cascade where we were currently standing would be Fall 2c.

We started looking for a way up to Fall 2b. Cade and the other guy from the trio saw us at the top of Fall 3, and they started up to join us. The other guy got up before Cade did, and he crossed the river and looked for a way around Fall 2c on the river-left, but he couldn’t find one. The first guy and I worked our way up the hillside on the river-right. I went a little higher because the guy said there was a lot of poison oak where he was. We came down on a rock overlooking Fall 2b, which was about 15 feet high.



This waterfall appeared to be the tallest of the Fall 2 trio. The plunge pool looked ideal for jumping from the spot where we were standing, but the jump wasn’t any better than the log jump at Fall 3, so I wasn’t going to attempt it. I found a way to climb down to the pool, and Cade and the second guy arrived about this time. The first guy was thinking of jumping, so I went in to check the depth. I had left my diving mask at the Fall 3 swimming hole, so I just went down a few feet. I didn’t touch the bottom, so the guy jumped and said he didn’t hit it either. We didn’t feel like returning the way we came, so we crossed back over to the river-right.





I knew from Google Earth and drone flyover videos that there were at least two more small waterfalls beyond this one, one of which (Fall 2a) was partially visible from where we were standing, but we decided to stop here and head back down, as continuing upstream looked like a steep and gnarly bushwhack. We wanted to see if the second guy had been mistaken about there not being a way around Fall 2c. I tried to climb down the rock face holding onto tree roots and branches, but Cade found a small path that went down to the Fall 2c plunge pool. I think one of the guys went back the way we came, and the other one jumped down Fall 2c, which required a running start, since that waterfall isn’t completely vertical. The woman had come up by this point and was waiting at the base of Fall 2c.

We all went back down to the Fall 3 swimming hole together. This scramble had apparently made everyone hot, because we all went straight to the log and jumped into the water to cool off. I swam across the pool and did another jump about eight feet high a couple of times. I then went to investigate a small sliding cascade just downstream of the Fall 3 swimming hole, but there weren’t really any clear sliding opportunities.



Cade’s hand was bleeding from pulling a splinter he had gotten climbing the log, and he said he wanted to put his regular shoes back on before scrambling back down to the base of Fall 4. I wanted to check out the pool at Fall 4, so Cade told me to go ahead and do that while he put his shoes on.

The trio was heading out at this point, so I went down with them. They continued back to the trail, and I got into the Fall 4 pool to check the depth below a low jump of about five feet. Unbeknownst to me, Cade took my picture from the top of the hill:



There was a fairly strong current circulating around the perimeter of the pool. The water looked about eight feet deep, but there were a few boulders that stuck up. I decided to wait for Cade before I tried jumping. I jumped when he got down, and then we headed back to where the trail met the river.

I decided to see if I could get a view of the bottom three waterfalls. I was able to get a partial view of Fall 5 and its plunge pool, and I could see the brink of Fall 6.





I swung out a little farther on the hillside, and I got a partial view of the Fall 6 plunge pool and the brink of Fall 7, which has no plunge pool.



It looked like I could keep going along the cliffs to get a better overlook view. Scrambling down to the base of Fall 5 looked doable, but getting to the bases of Falls 6 and 7 looked like it would probably require rock-climbing gear, at least from where I was standing (this article has some ground-level pictures from the bases of Falls 6 and 7). It was getting close to 5:00 PM, and I had probably done enough sketchy scrambling far from help for one day, so I headed back to where the trail met the river.

Here is a video of my ground-level clips of Seven Falls. The clips are in order from upstream to downstream:

Watch on YouTube

I immersed myself in the river for a little while so I could start the hike cool, and then I put on my boots. We didn’t make it very far up the hill before the coolness from my final immersion wore off and I had sweat rolling down. While going up was less sketchy than coming down, it was definitely more strenuous. It took us about forty minutes to get to the top, and another eight to get back to where we had parked the car.

Two hours later, we got back to Chico and took showers before going out, because we were super crusty. We then walked downtown and got dinner at Burgers and Brew.

In summary, I thought Seven Falls was a pretty good swimming hole destination. I had been curious about how it would compare to Curtain Falls, since we did that as a backup plan in place of Seven Falls on our first trip. I liked Seven Falls better from a swimming hole standpoint, even though Curtain Falls was about ten degrees warmer, but Cade said he liked the admittedly more scenic hike to Bald Rock Canyon and Curtain Falls better. My only complaint about Seven Falls was the cold water, especially since we seem to be having a streak of annoyingly cold swimming holes on this trip when we would really like to find some with more moderate temperatures. Other than that, though, Seven Falls has pretty much everything a swimming hole aficionado could want: sparkling crystal clear water, multiple large pools and waterfalls to explore, plenty of places to climb and jump from, and warm flat rocks to lie on after a cold swim. I don't know if it quite beats Royal Gorge (Seven Falls has better waterfalls and bigger pools, but the setting was not quite as epic as Royal Gorge, and the jumping opportunities were not as good), but if I were making a Top 5 list of California swimming holes, Seven Falls would certainly be on it. I would definitely be up for returning sometime and exploring the falls further. I would love to get better views of the bottom three waterfalls, and I know there were more cascades and pools than what we saw today, especially upstream of Fall 2.