Linville Gorge - Four Foot Ledge

[flyminion]

The weather forecast in the mountains has been mostly rainy this month, but it looked like this Friday and Saturday (and possibly Sunday) were going to be dry, so I decided to take advantage of it. Although the rain showers this month have been frequent, they must not have been torrential in the Linville Gorge area, because the river has remained at a relatively swimmable summer flow. I decided to take advantage of this, so today I checked out a rapid called Four Foot Ledge (hereafter, 4FL) on the Linville River. This one wasn’t high on my to-do list, but I am running out of points of interest in the northern half of the gorge that would be safe not completely moronic to check out alone, and I haven’t done much research on the southern half of the gorge (I plan to focus more on that next year), so 4FL it was. In kayaking videos, it looked like a nice bedrock slide, with more bedrock slabs just downstream and possible swimming holes both above and below the rapid. However, kayaking is done in much higher water, so it’s hard to tell what this spot would look like in a summer flow. There was only one way to find out.

Four Foot Ledge is located where the river snakes around a series of peninsulas, culminating with Babel Tower, before straightening out and flowing generally south. I’m not sure if the peninsulas have names, but Allen T. Hyde mentions in his book The Linville Gorge and Wilson Creek Hikers Guide: An Introduction that there’s an unofficial side trail that he refers to as the Island Ridge Trail that goes across the ridge of the peninsula immediately to the west of Babel Tower. He also mentions a “Hyatt’s Knob”, but it is unclear if this is the Island Ridge peninsula or the next one to the west of it. For the purposes of this entry, the peninsulas (going from west to east) are Brushy Ridge, Hyatt’s Knob, Island Ridge, and Babel Tower (with the caveat that I might have the first three names wrong). While we’re on the topic of nomenclature, American Whitewater and A Wet State give conflicting names for Four Foot Ledge; the former refers to it as California Dreamin, but the latter calls it Four Foot Ledge and instead refers to Bynum Bluff Falls (a small waterfall at the base of Brushy Ridge) as California Dreamin’. I’m going to use A Wet State’s naming scheme on this entry, as they do a better job at naming the rapids upstream of Babel Tower.

Now that we have all that out of the way, 4FL is located between Island Ridge and Hyatt’s Knob. It looked like the most direct route would be to hike to Babel Tower Falls via the Linville Gorge Trail (LGT) and then follow the river upstream along the riverbank. There is another rapid called Two-Tiered Slide (hereafter, 2TS) a little less than 0.5 miles upstream of 4FL, so I was considering making a loop all the way around Hyatt’s Knob and picking up the Cabin Trail (a short but steep rim-to-river trail about a mile west of Babel Tower that ends at the western base of Hyatt’s Knob), but that would be about a mile of river-walking alone in an area not paralleled by a trail, so I was only going to try that if it looked super easy.

I stopped by Subway for a quick lunch on my way out of Marion and then drove to the west rim of the gorge. When I got there, I was relieved to see that they had fixed the road since my December visit, meaning I could drive all the way to the trailhead (granted, the Cabin Trail head is less than a quarter mile from where I had to stop last time). The Cabin Trail is a pretty direct path to the bottom of the gorge. And by that, I mean 720 feet of elevation loss to the LGT junction in literally half a mile. It was basically rock climbing in spots.



It was sort of like the Seven Falls Trail in California, except less dusty and more rocky. As I was going down, I kept muttering to myself, “This is going to suck so much ass to come back up.” When I got to the junction with the LGT, I saw where the Cabin Trail continued on the other side. I went a short distance on it to an overlook of Hyatt's Knob, and I saw that the trail descended a couple hundred more feet down to the river over about a quarter mile.

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I decided I wasn’t going to go all the way to the bottom here, because I did NOT want to backtrack up this trail if I got to 2TS and couldn’t continue all the way around the knob. The Hyatt's Knob ridge dropped down to about 40 feet above the river at the base of the peninsula, so I decided I would see if there was a path across this dip when I checked out 4FL; if there wasn’t, then I probably wouldn’t try to check out 2TS today.

I was going to take a quarter-mile detour upstream on the LGT to check out Bynum Bluff Falls, but when I saw how far down I was going to have to go (and then come back up), I decided to blow it off for today and just go to 4FL. I was hot and ready for a dip at this point. I followed the LGT downstream about a mile to the Babel Tower Falls side trail. The elevation loss just to get to the side trail was pretty significant, so I was seriously considering taking the Babel Tower Trail on the return hike and just walking back to my car via the road. When I got down to the river, I was surprised to see that no one was at Babel Tower Falls. I know today is a Friday, but still. I noticed a faint path and a campsite just upstream of the falls, so I took it, but it quickly gave out after a rock overhang.



I remembered a sign at the trailhead saying that the Linville Gorge Wilderness has a high rate of search and rescues (90% of which are due to noob mistakes), and I was thinking about how embarrassing it would be if I became a statistic. I wanted to keep my hiking boots on as long as possible for ankle support, but the time had come to walk through water. I switched to my Vibrams and crossed the river (in hindsight, crossing to the river left at the very beginning would have been easier). I made it a short distance upstream before I had to cross again at the bend where Hyatt's Knob began.



I looked for a scramble path that traversed the peninsula at the point where the ridge dipped down, but I didn’t see one (I wasn’t really expecting to). From this point, I made it all the way to 4FL on the river right without having to cross again.



There were a lot of sloped bedrock slabs approaching the rapid, and a few pools (or small pockets of water) that looked potentially deep, although not broad enough to be legit swimming holes.



Despite the name, Four Foot Ledge was about six or seven feet high.



The pool at the base may have been deep, but it was only a few feet wide and very turbulent, so I didn’t get in.



I crossed to the river left and walked along the bedrock slabs to check for a side trail coming in from Island Ridge (Allen T. Hyde mentions in his book that there is one).



I didn’t see the side trail at first, but then I found what looked like a faint path when I looked closer (the beginning of it was obscured by overgrowth at the tree line). I had been skeptical that there could be a path down to the river from the top of the ridge given the terrain, but in person I could see that the ridgeline was only about 40-50 feet above the river.

I had noted on Google Earth that the pool above 4FL looked more likely to be a swimming hole than the one below it, so I was ready to check that out.



I got in, and there were a few spots where I couldn’t touch the bottom, but I had left my snorkel in my backpack on the rocks at the bottom of the falls. I retrieved it and then snorkeled the pool. It was about 7.5 feet deep at its deepest point.



I swam here and sunned on the rocks for a while.



Here is a video of Four Foot Ledge in its entirety:

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At first, I had decided not to continue around Hyatt’s Knob, but I saw that there seemed to be a faint path continuing upstream, and there were plastic bottles and these weird elliptical sponges with wheels (mock fish, maybe?) strewn about, so I started to feel a little more comfortable and decided this place wasn’t as secluded as I had thought. I’m guessing the litterbugs came in via the Island Ridge Trail (because I doubt anyone dumb enough to litter down here is going to make the effort to hike down from Babel Tower and then river walk upstream from there). I followed the path a short distance to another bend where a boulder overlooked a potential swimming hole.

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There was a massive overhanging cliff up ahead at the next bend.



I decided maybe I could complete the loop, so I scrambled back downstream and fetched my backpack. However, when I returned to this spot, I was disappointed to see that the trail gave out just beyond it. I decided I might as well snorkel the pool while I was here. It was mostly shallow and bouldery, but there was one spot where it was about six feet deep. I walked through the river (without my gear) to the massive rock wall and looked upstream. It was a straight stretch of about a quarter mile, with 2TS apparently just around the next bend. I was about halfway around the knob at this point, and continuing onward looked doable from what I could see, but I didn’t want to get more than halfway around and risk hitting an impasse, so I decided to double back.

As I returned to the pool above 4FL, I could see why some sources call this spot California Dreamin’. The hot sun and sloping bedrock riverbanks on the horizon line definitely had me dreaming of California.



I tried to cool off before walking the 0.35 miles back to Babel Tower Falls along the hot, unshaded riverbed, but the water was a little too warm for that today. I estimated it was about 78 °F, and my thermometer said 78.7 °F when I checked later at Babel Tower Falls.

I did the return hike entirely on the river left.



This route was probably more strenuous than the river-right would have been, up until the 90 degree bend at the base of Hyatt’s Knob.



To my surprise, there was still no one around when I got back to Babel Tower Falls. I figured someone would have shown up by now, because it was HOT out (not California-hot, mind you, but hot for the Blue Ridge Mountains). I won’t go into detail about this particular swimming hole, as I already covered it in a previous trip report from 2017, but here is a picture and video from today:

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I was super hungry by this point, so I scarfed down a Clif Bar and got into the pool. As I was working my way down to the water, I saw a dead fish in a puddle, but it was moving (or rather, something was moving it). It slowly disappeared into a crack in the rock. I forgot about this and swam across the current to the shaded side of the pool. I actually did feel a little chilly over there after getting out of the water and standing in the shade with the breeze blowing. It didn’t last, though. I got hot again when I returned to the sunny side of the pool to eat my other Clif Bar. I saw something moving in the puddle where the fish had disappeared and realized it was a water snake. A very fat water snake, since it had just had a snack (i.e., the disappearing fish). The snake was pretty shy, but I did manage to get a partial picture of it.



I had decided earlier that I was going to take the Babel Tower Trail back to the road. However, when I got back up to the LGT, the trail was nice and shaded, and I knew the Babel Tower Ridge and the road were probably going to be exposed, so I ultimately decided to backtrack to reach the car faster. Going back up the Cabin Trail was actually not as bad as I thought (while it was happening, at least; ask me again when I use these legs to do another Linville Gorge hike tomorrow). Don’t get me wrong, it was a workout, but it was over relatively quickly (probably less than 30 minutes).

I drove back to Marion and got a 14-inch Hawaiian pizza from Pepperonis. I referred back to one of my blogs from 2020 and saw that I mentioned liking their pizza, so I figured it would hit the spot tonight. Picking up the pizza was a little awkward because I was sweaty and disgusting, and I thought I would just pop in, get it, and leave. However, there was a slow line of people at the counter, and there was no a/c in the building, so that was an uncomfortable few minutes. The pizza was indeed good, though. I put away the whole thing, except for the crusts. My dad always used to say, “Why would I fill up on crusts when I could eat more cheese and toppings?!” That always amused me, but I guess I took after him tonight. This was also a harsh reminder that eating an entire pizza makes me unquenchably thirsty.

In summary, Four Foot Ledge was nothing spectacular compared to some of the other swimming holes in Linville Gorge, but it was a nice, secluded area (today, at least) with a pool for swimming and plenty of rock slabs for sunbathing. Even though the swimming hole per se was nothing special, I felt a certain affinity for this spot, perhaps due to its Californian aesthetic. I blew off Two-Tiered Slide today because river-walking all the way around Hyatt’s Knob didn’t seem like a good idea to do alone. Ascending the upper portion of the Cabin Trail turned out not to be as bad as I thought, so I might take it all the way down to the river at some point and approach Two-Tiered Slide from upstream.