"Cinnamon Creek" - Part 2
Jun. 7th, 2020 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flyminion
I originally wasn’t planning on doing anything this weekend, but I saw that Saturday and Sunday were both supposed to be in the 80s and dry in the mountains, which will probably be the only time that happens in the foreseeable future, so I quickly decided on Friday that I was going to go to the mountains. My main goal for this weekend was to finish “Cinnamon” Creek. That isn’t the creek’s real name, but rather the alias I gave it in my first entry to keep the location secret. I had originally planned on doing Cinnamon Creek as an end-of-summer trek, since it is pretty high on the treachery scale, and I wouldn’t want to break my ankle or something right at the beginning of summer and be out of commission for the rest of swimming hole season. However, with all the coronavirus restrictions, I don’t have high hopes for this being a productive swimming hole year, so I decided to go ahead and go for it. It has rained pretty torrentially for the past few weeks, so I knew the creeks and rivers would be high, which is bad for larger waterways but works to the advantage of smaller streams like Cinnamon Creek. My brother Brian, who had gone with me to Cinnamon Creek last time, said he was free both days this weekend. We originally planned on Saturday, but he remembered he had something going on that night, so we changed to Sunday. I figured I would hit a different swimming hole on Saturday, so I made plans with Miranda to go to Upper Creek Falls. I knew the creek would be high, but I thought that also might make the slides better. I went by Kohl’s on Friday after work to get a new swimsuit, since the only one I had that was good for butt-sliding and had good pockets got ripped at California’s Rock Creek last summer.Yesterday, I drove up from Raleigh and went to Upper Creek Falls with Miranda. There were cars spilling out of the parking lot and parked along the roadway. The upper swimming hole was pretty crowded, and no one seemed to care about masks or social distancing. As I expected, the water levels were higher than usual. I think the only time we have been there with similar water levels was back in 2009. I’m not dedicating a separate entry to yesterday’s excursion since I have been to Upper Creek Falls many times and have blogged it before, but I did want to say that yesterday's higher water levels made the lower slide really fun.
At normal summer flows, you get stuck in the middle of the slide and have to push yourself, but at higher flows, the water pushes you through. I probably did it at least ten times. I ended up with a bruise on my ass, but it was worth it.
Since dine-in seemed like it would be too much of a hassle with current restrictions, I checked into my hotel (the Hampton Inn & Suites in Boone, since I felt like treating myself), and Miranda picked up some Chipotle takeout while I got a Hungry Howie’s ham, bacon, and pineapple pizza, and we ate in the hotel’s courtyard at separate tables. The pizza tasted very similar to Little Caesar’s, which is not a bad thing.
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Today was dedicated to finishing up Cinnamon Creek. To briefly recap my previous entry, I had discovered Cinnamon Creek on Google Earth and marked three points of interest (POIs) that looked like potential waterfalls or swimming holes in an area where the creek lost over 200 feet of elevation over about a quarter mile. There is no trail along the creek, so Brian and I parked along the road and followed the creek downstream to the area of interest in 2018. POIs 1 and 2 were in the upper half of the waterfall area, and POI 3 was at the very bottom. Between POIs 2 and 3 is an area I referred to as the “shadow zone” in my previous entry because that area is hidden in shadows on Google Earth. We successfully made our way down four cascades (POIs 1 and 2, plus two additional cascades I had not marked). Cascade #4 is where the shadow zone began. We got hung up there because the creek walk becomes a quasi-canyoneering adventure; the only way to continue on was to swim through a pool of 61 °F water, and Brian wasn’t up for it, plus it was getting too late in the day. I swam the pool and made it halfway down cascade #5 while Brian waited out of sight at cascade #4, but getting to the bottom of cascade #5 was going to be steep and slippery, so I decided to save it for another day when I had more time and more people. Since then, I have been wanting to get back out here and get to POI 3 (which I will hereafter refer to as the final waterfall, since I now know there are more than three cascades). I said in the conclusion of my previous entry that I would want to be with a group of at least four people the next time I went, but I got a few more creek walks under my belt last year, so this time I felt a little more confident going in (although I did keep imagining the terrible feeling of my feet shooting out from under me on the drive over).
I met up with Brian along the main road near the trailhead. We had planned to meet at 11:15 AM, so I got there a little early to give myself time to eat the sandwich I had picked up at Subway on my way out of Boone. After 30 minutes went by and Brian didn’t show, I was about to drive down to the creek to see if he had gone there instead, but he finally showed up and said that the drive was longer than he had thought. We finally parked at the creek and got started around 12:30 PM. I was apprehensive because there were some gray clouds moving in, and rain would make the waterfalls totally unnavigable. We decided to go ahead and get started, and see what the weather looked like by the time we got to the waterfalls. It ended up just being partly cloudy, and there didn’t seem to be any signs of rain.
I won’t give a play-by-play of the areas we explored on our first visit (you can find that in my previous entry on Cinnamon Creek), because we navigated those cascades in the same way as before with the exception of cascade #3. I did take some new pictures of the previously-seen cascades since it was sunnier today.
Cascade #1:
Cascade #2:
Cascade #3:
Last time, we had used a fallen log to climb down the small vertical drop at the top of cascade #3, but the log was no longer there. However, we noticed a passage we had somehow missed last time on the river-left side, where a small portion of the flow was going. We used the passage to bypass the top of the cascade.
I had gotten my shirt wet by walking through water that was a little too deep, so I took it off to dry in an area that was getting a lot of sunlight at the top of cascade #4. I had been wearing a face mask up to this point, but the ear loop snapped off, so I would be hiking unmasked for the rest of the excursion.
Cascade #4:
The boulder overlooking cascade #4 is where Brian had stopped last time, because the cascade drops into a deep plunge pool enclosed between two steeply sloped rock walls, and the entire hillside drops off a cliff at the downstream end of the pool, so there is no way to bypass cascade #5, which is a sluice-like waterfall that drops through a narrow slot between the cliff and large overhanging boulders (photos from last time):
A huge boulder dams cascade #4’s plunge pool and bisects cascade #5, with the majority of the flow going down the river-left side of it. The only way to continue on from here is to swim through the pool and descend the river-right side of cascade #5, which is mossy, stair-steppy, and only has a trickle of water going over it. Last time, I swam through the pool and made it about halfway down cascade #5, but it got too treacherous to make it all the way down alone, so I decided to save it for another day. Brian had said he would swim the pool this time, so I climbed down into it to re-check the depth, so that he could just jump in from the boulder rather than having to ease in. As I was making my way down to the water, I heard this super loud roaring sound, like thunder when lightning strikes very close by. It lasted too long to be thunder, and I realized it was a military jet. I didn’t see it because I was in the middle of the foliage, but Brian said he saw it fly directly overhead. We were relieved it wasn’t thunder, or a huge boulder rolling down the hill. The pool felt just as cold as last time, but I went right in instead of taking the time to ease in. I swam around to the downstream end of the boulder, and Brian handed down our backpacks. Now that I was here again, it looked like you might be able to crawl through a tunnel beneath the boulder rather than swim through the pool, but one slip here could mean disaster (the top of the waterfall is right at the edge of the picture below).
I went in the pool with my diving mask to check the depth. I couldn’t see the bottom because the sun wasn’t shining directly into the water, and my mask kept fogging up, but I got a good enough look to see that it was sufficiently deep with no obstructions at the end of the boulder. I climbed back up to the boulder just to make sure I could get back up without a rope before Brian jumped down. I crawled through the underbrush back onto the boulder and jumped into the spot I had scoped out without touching the bottom. Brian followed, and his reaction to the cold water was pretty great (video contains language):
We successfully made it down the first half of the river-right side of cascade #5.
At the midpoint, we were able to walk over and get a base view of the upper tier of the river-left side of the cascade. I actually had this opportunity last time, but I guess I didn’t notice it since I was so focused on trying to get all the way down to the bottom. The upper tier looked to be about 15 feet high.
The lower tier looked about the same or slightly higher, under a massive rock overhang.
We went back to the low-flow side to try to get all the way down to the bottom. This was the spot where I had decided to turn back on my previous visit, leaving this view stuck in my head for the past two years:
The cascade was mossy and stair-steppy, but there were some super slick spots, and at the very bottom was about a six-foot drop. I crossed to the other side of the creek and looped a rope around an overhanging tree for support (the first time since buying these ropes in 2015 that I’ve actually needed to use one of them). I held onto the rope as I descended the slippery cascade, and Brian lowered our backpacks to me when I was halfway down. I then went the rest of the way and had to do a pretty big dip to get myself down the final drop. The only way I can really say I accomplished this is by being tall. Brian lowered our packs to me when he made it to the halfway point, and then he worked his way to the bottom.
When we stepped back, we could see the better half of cascade #5's lower tier hiding beneath a canopy of overhanging boulders and rhododendron branches. I could definitely see why this one was in the shadow zone on Google Earth.
We walked around to the other side of the creek to get a closer look. This was probably the most impressive waterfall we had seen so far: a 15 to 20 foot drop inside a massive rock overhang. The pictures unfortunately don't do justice to the size.
Cascade #5 totaled about 30 feet altogether, but there was no front-on vantage point of both drops at the same time due to the overhang and the curvature of the gorge. Here is a video of both the upper and lower tiers:
I got into the pool at the base, and it was about six feet deep. I could touch the bottom with my tiptoes.
Just past this was a sixth cascade, but it wasn’t the final falls. I was going to be pissed if we had gone through the trouble of getting down cascade #5, the most treacherous so far, only to find that cascade #6 was non-navigable. Fortunately, #6 was fairly easy to descend using the boulder piles to the river-right.
Cascade #6 was a set of three small drops totaling about 15 feet.
Just past this was yet ANOTHER cascade. I was really hoping this was the final waterfall (POI 3), and it was. Here is what it looked like on Google Earth:
It started off with a small cascade of about 6 feet before plunging about 15 feet over a large boulder.
There was no way down the boulder, but we were able to bushwhack around it through the woods and get down to the base.
There was a small pool at the base, but it didn’t really look large enough in diameter to be a very good swimming hole. I climbed up onto a boulder and looked downstream to make sure there were no more significant cascades, but it looked like the creek had returned to business as usual for as far as I could see (which admittedly wasn’t very far). Brian was consulting the map to see if we should continue downstream to where the Mountains-to-Sea Trail crosses the creek, but I showed him on the GPS that it would be way longer than going back the way we came. I asked if we got to name the waterfalls since no one has apparently named these yet (unless they’re part of Kevin Adams’ secret stash). Brian said he thought so, and I said I had always wanted to name a waterfall Balls Falls (because I’m that mature). I asked which one should get that name, and he said cascade #4, due to the anatomical distress caused by the required swimming through that waterfall’s freezing cold plunge pool. I said I had always thought of cascade #4 as a Shadow Falls, since it is the first waterfall of the shadow zone, but now that I have seen them all, I guess #5 is more worthy of that title. My first impression of #5 is that it looked like a Cave Falls or Cavern Falls, but I think those names are already taken by other NC waterfalls.
I got into the pool at the base of cascade #7. It was over my head, but the current was too strong and pushed me out of the pool.
It was getting close to 4 PM at this point, so we headed back up. We stopped to get another look at cascade #5b, and then we climbed back up the safer side of it and collected the rope. I re-snorkeled the pool at cascade #4 and found the bottom this time, since the sunlight was more direct. The bottom was mostly sandy in the deep portion of the pool. I then climbed the sloping rock wall and bushwhacked up onto the boulder. Brian handed me our packs and swam through the pool again, with vocal assistance. He climbed up the bank, and I passed our packs to him through the brush. When I passed mine, I dropped it, and it landed right on the edge of the ledge, narrowly avoiding a plummet over cascade #5 (that would have been bad, since my keys, phone, and wallet were in there). I didn’t feel like crawling through the branches again to get off the boulder, so I jumped back into the pool and climbed up the bank. I almost forgot my shirt when we got back to the top of cascade #4, since it was gray and blended in with the rocks, but Brian spotted it and reminded me. It was nice and dry by this time. When we got to the top of Cascade #2, I checked a small pool there that had caught my eye earlier, but it was only chest deep. I had also wanted to check the depth of a broad pool just upstream from cascade #1, but it was only about shoulder-deep at its deepest point (photo from my previous visit):
It was around 7 PM when we got back to the cars. The excursion had taken us a solid six hours, so it was probably good we didn’t try to go all the way last time. I had to drive back to Raleigh, so we both drove out and went our separate ways after taking turns changing into dry clothes at a large vacant campsite next to the creek. I drove to Morganton and got Sonic, mainly because I wanted to try their cake batter shake, which was delish. I think this weekend is the first time I’ve had restaurant food since the quarantine started. I noticed when I got into town that the roads were wet, indicating that it actually had rained, but we had been lucky enough not to get rained on at the creek. I then did the agonizingly long drive back to Raleigh with visions of bright sunlight reflecting off green moss and waterfall spray dancing in my head.
In summary, I’m glad to have finally conquered all of my points of interest for Cinnamon Creek. There ended up being seven waterfalls in total (eight if you count the ten-footer halfway between the road and the main waterfall zone, which I didn’t mention in this entry). Cascade #4 had a legit swimming hole with a low jump, and cascades #5 and #7 had pools that were deep but a little too small in diameter to be ideal for swimming (illegit swimming holes, I guess?). From a waterfall viewing standpoint, I would say the highlight cascades are #5, #7, and #2, in that order. As I predicted, the creek was a little higher this time, so the waterfalls had a bit more volume than last time. This is not really a place you would go if your main objective was to see a waterfall or go swimming, because you can do better in both departments at more easily accessible areas. The allure for me was more the adventure of finding something completely on my own without being spoon-fed any information whatsoever by published sources. I probably wouldn’t go to the trouble of bushwhacking to and then climbing down these waterfalls a third time, but this was still a cool little secret spot.
