Yankee Jim's & Shirttail Creek Falls

[flyminion]

Today, my friend Cade and I kicked off our fourth annual California swimming hole marathon with an excursion to Yankee Jim’s Bridge on the North Fork American River, and we also checked out Shirttail Creek Falls on a side stream about a mile upstream from the bridge.

Lining up this year’s trip proved to be challenging because Murphy’s Law was attacking from all angles. We normally hit up California swimming holes in late July or August because many of the rivers are fed by snowmelt, and they don’t become (relatively) warm and hospitable until later in the summer. However, California had record low snowfall this past winter, and everything is drying up at a greatly accelerated rate due to the drought. I checked the water levels for the rivers we had visited in the past, and the levels this June were already below where they usually are in late summer. I kept seeing on the national news that lakes were so low that the water levels had dropped below the ends of the boat ramps. I knew we needed to get a move-on if we wanted to stay ahead of the drought (and the inevitable accompanying wildfires), so we scheduled a seven-day trip from July 5-11. However, I got hit with a job interview request for that week, and they were unable to be flexible with the dates. Cade already had some work projects on the back end of those dates and was only able to push the dates back by a day, so we ended up having to shave two days off the trip. I had originally planned to take us to Yosemite for the first couple of days, and then move up to gold country (i.e., the area of the Sierras just north and east of Sacramento) to spend more time exploring the South Yuba and North Fork American Rivers. However, after cutting the trip down to five days, we decided to blow off Yosemite yet again and spend the entire time in gold country. If these setbacks weren’t enough, we then found out that the area would be under an excessive heat warning with temperatures in the 100’s (not including the heat index) for pretty much the entire duration of our trip. That was going to make the excursions with long hikes potentially dangerous, but we thought that this in conjunction with the drought might have the silver lining of making some of the colder swimming holes (e.g., Emerald Pools, Royal Gorge) a little warmer this time.

Yankee Jim’s didn’t strike me as a standout swimming hole, but I wanted to go there for two reasons. First and foremost, it was featured on a Rescue 911 episode (aptly titled “American River”, which you can watch here), and I heard they were possibly going to tear down the bridge soon to put in a new one, so I wanted to see it while it was still there. Second, we hadn’t checked out any spots on the North Fork American River other than Royal Gorge (which was awesome, but the water was way too cold), so checking out more swimming holes on the North Fork American was my main objective for this trip. I had come up with a few potential spots to check out, but most of them require a fair amount of effort to get to, so I figured Yankee Jim’s might be a good starting point since it’s right off the road. It would also give us a chance to test the water temperature to see if arduous hikes to more remote spots further upstream would be worth it in the coming days. Yankee Jim’s had apparently become Instagram-famous and blown up with tourists last year during covid, causing a 300-car traffic jam on the small one-lane dirt road that leads to it, so I made it a point to schedule this excursion for a weekday.

After I flew into Sacramento yesterday evening, Cade picked me up at the airport, and we ate at the Auburn Alehouse. We checked into the Northern Queen Inn in Grass Valley (a regrettable hotel choice that Cade neglected to read the Yelp reviews on before booking). Luckily, we were only there for one night. We checked out this morning and dropped our stuff off at tonight’s hotel, the Grass Valley Courtyard Suites (we decided to treat ourselves after enduring the Northern Queen). They wouldn’t have our room ready until this afternoon, but they were nice enough to let us store our luggage in one of their back rooms so we wouldn’t have to leave it unattended and visible in our rented SUV while we were at the river.

We then drove out to Yankee Jim’s bridge. The last 3.5 miles of the drive was on sort of a rough dirt road on the edge of a steep canyon, but it was passable for normal cars. There were about six cars there when we got to the bottom around 12:20 PM, so we found a parking spot on the south side of the bridge (which was a rusty suspension bridge that appeared to have sheets of tin as the base material).



We walked out on the bridge to check out the river. Just upstream of the bridge was the gravel bar where the Rescue 911 segment was filmed.



The swimming hole began directly underneath the bridge and continued downstream.



I had wanted to walk upstream on the Indian Creek Trail and check out some points of interest I had marked on Google Earth, but first we walked down to the river to take some pictures of the area where the Rescue 911 segment was filmed.





After that, I decided I needed to swim before we did any hiking. We crossed the road and climbed down to the swimming hole on the downstream side of the bridge.



The weather was crazy hot today, even for California. The water was 81 °F and was very low, according to people who had been here in previous years. They said it was usually a lot chillier than this, which reaffirmed that this would be a good year to check out some swimming holes that are normally too cold to be enjoyable (I’m talking to you, Emerald Pools). I asked one woman there if there were any more swimming holes upstream on the Indian Creek Trail, but she said there weren’t. It looked like there were on Google Earth, so I suggested to Cade that she might be trying to throw us off from the secret spots. He said she would probably be there instead of the bridge if there were any.

I snorkeled the pool, and it looked to be up to 15 feet deep in some places. The water was clear but appeared dark bluish-green due to the silt and algae that had accumulated on the rocks due to this year's low flow. The water was about 8-10 feet deep up against the potential jumping rocks that lined the river, but it looked possible to jump out to deeper water.



I spent a fair amount of time diving down to the bottom and making piles of white rocks to mark ideal landing spots. Climbing up to the potential jumps (ranging from about 8-12 feet at today's water level) hurt my feet because the rocks were really hot. They were smooth and slick too, so I had to be careful with wet feet. I jumped from about 8 feet the first time and moved up a couple more feet once I got comfortable bending my knees to avoid hitting the bottom too hard. It was so hot out that we just stayed in the water most of the time and conversed with other people who were there.

Here is a video of the Yankee Jim’s area. Note the air temperature on the car’s thermometer (at 1:42) when we drive across the bridge at the end:

Watch on YouTube

Some of the other people who were there started doing higher, sketchier jumps where they had to jump out pretty far to get to deep water. Someone mentioned that a jumper had to be airlifted out earlier this week because they broke their femur. It sounded like this location could have been featured in more Rescue 911 episodes if the show were still in production.
___

We finally left around 4 PM and decided to head up the road to see if Shirttail Creek Falls was flowing. We could see from the road that Shirttail Creek was low, but it was still making some noise. We started to walk up the road to the falls, since the road was shaded and we didn’t want to relinquish our parking spot (it hadn’t been crowded when we got there, but people had steadily started showing up just after we arrived). However, when we reached the end of the shaded portion of the road, we decided to go back and get the car. We drove to where a couple of other cars had pulled off the road, and we took a short but steep and dusty scramble trail down to the waterfall.



The falls were running, but not strongly.

Watch on YouTube

There were three people there who had found an abandoned duckling they had named Daffy. It seemed to have bonded with them and looked really cuddly. They said they planned to take it to a wildlife sanctuary.



The water was slightly cooler here than the river. I guessed it was about 73 °F, but my thermometer said 77 °F. Then again, it says the inside of my mouth is 85 °F, so I’m starting to take its readings with a grain of salt. I snorkeled the pool and once again used white rocks to mark where the water appeared deep enough to jump. I couldn’t find a direct way up the cliffs, so I had to take the sketchy trail to the top of the falls. I was going to jump from the top of the waterfall, but the rocks were too slick to get close to the edge, so I worked my way to the cliffs on the river right and did a really sketchy descent down the steep dusty rocks to a ledge about eight feet above the pool. I jumped and didn’t hit the bottom, so I rechecked the depth and jumped again from about 12 feet.



Some teenagers had shown up by this point and had climbed directly up the waterfall, and they were jumping from the highest point of the adjacent cliff (about 25 feet). A couple of the duck people did backflips. The teenagers fired up a charcoal grill, which seemed like a stupid thing to do given the high fire danger from everything being so dry this year.

Cade and I headed out and drove back to Grass Valley, where we officially checked into Grass Valley Courtyard Suites (a very non-regrettable hotel choice, but unfortunately they are booked past tomorrow, so we only get one night here). We then walked about a block to Cirinos for dinner because Cade wanted pasta, but he wasn’t too thrilled with their menu, and none of their burgers or sandwiches came with fries, which was an automatic demerit from me. Neither of us were too thrilled with our dinner. There was also some kind of street festival going on downtown, but it was disbanding by the time we finished eating.

In summary, Yankee Jim’s was nothing spectacular (for California), but it was a decent swimming hole with some jumps and a comfortable water temperature (with the caveat that this is an unusually low flow year). I can now say I’ve crossed it off my Rescue 911 bucket list. I’m not sure why it has gotten so blown up with tourists, though. I doubt many of them are viewers of Rescue 911. Probably from influencers on Instagram going down there and taking selfies, but it seems like a pretty ordinary California swimming hole, so I’m not sure why this particular spot is Instagram famous. Maybe just because it’s so close to the road? Shirttail Creek Falls was okay. It's not something I would make a special trip for on its own merit, but it makes a nice bonus if you’re already doing an excursion in the area.