Lake Jocassee 2022
Sep. 21st, 2022 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flyminion
For the past three days, my mom and I have been kayaking on Lake Jocassee. We had been talking about going again after our trip last year, but there haven’t really been any good stretches of warm, dry weather until this week. Last year, we checked out places within out-and-back paddling distance of Devil’s Fork State Park, but we didn’t get to see all the waterfalls that spilled into the lake because the kayak shuttle was booked up that time (the kayak shuttle is a pontoon boat that hauls you and your kayaks to a drop-off point on the lake, for an exorbitant fee). The named waterfalls on the lake are Laurel Fork Falls, Mill Creek Falls, Devil’s Hole Creek Falls, Wright Creek Falls, and Bad Creek Falls (okay, the last one isn’t named, but it’s large enough to be noteworthy). We had only visited the latter two waterfalls last time, so our objective this time was to see the other three, especially Laurel Fork Falls, which looked like the highlight. The shuttle was available this time, so we were in business. There was only one available villa (#2) at the park this week, so we snagged it while we still could.We got here Monday, September 19 after 3 PM, so we put in at the northernmost boat ramp and paddled a couple of miles around the corner to the jumping spot I had found last year. On the way, we thought we spotted a bat flying around in one of the coves, but it seemed odd that one would be out during the daytime.
I jumped about four times when we got to the jumping rock.
We then paddled back to the boat ramp. We decided to leave the truck there and paddle the boats back to the villa so we wouldn’t have as far to paddle back tomorrow. I had wanted to paddle to Eclectic Sun near the main boat ramp and get a visor before they closed (supposedly at 6PM), but I didn’t make it in time, which meant my eyes would be eating sun tomorrow. We secured the boats to a tree on the beach next to the villa boat dock and left them there (photo from last year):
We timed the paddle between there and the main boat dock (where the shuttle leaves from) at about eight minutes. I snorkeled at the villa boat dock and jumped off it before we walked back up to the villa, and we had a take-and-bake pizza for dinner.
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Tuesday morning, September 20, I got up at 6 AM (there may have been a couple of snooze button pressings), ate some Pop-Tarts, and packed my lunch. As we were packing up, I was under the impression that my mom had packed the sunscreen, but she thought that I had packed it, so we didn’t end up bringing any. I put some on before we left, but spoiler alert, it didn't last all day. We paddled around to the main boat dock, and the guy helped us load our kayaks into the pontoon. We were the only two people on the shuttle this morning. He said Tuesdays are usually pretty slow. Weekends are busy for obvious reasons, and Mondays are busy with people who hate the weekend warriors. But apparently none of the above stick around for Tuesdays.
Our plan was to get dropped off at Laurel Fork Falls and paddle back to the north boat ramp where we had parked the truck. We also wanted to see Mill Creek Falls, but it didn’t look worth the extra paddling, so the guy was nice enough to take us there on the pontoon boat.
It was probably about 20 feet high. It looked like a really nice swimming spot, but it was still cool and shady at 8:20 AM, plus I was kind of chilly from the windy boat ride. The driver then ferried us to a drop-off point near Laurel Fork Falls.
We could smell a campfire and could see that there was a Foothills Trail Access point very close to the drop-off. It was hard to get a good view as we paddled up to the waterfall because the sun was directly behind it.
It was a two-tiered waterfall that totaled about 80-100 feet high. The lower tier dropped below a rock wall into a narrow channel, so we paddled into the channel to get a good view of it.
I then climbed up the rock wall to get a better view of the upper tier.
On top of the wall was a trail that led to a base view of the upper tier.
It looked like there was a super-steep scramble trail that might provide a mid-overlook view, but I decided it probably wasn’t worth the effort. Here is a collection of video clips I took of the falls:
When I got back to my boat, I wondered if the water might be deep enough for jumping on the front side of the rock wall, but my mom stuck her paddle in, and it was only about four feet deep.
As we paddled out of the cove, I noticed some overhanging muscadine grapevines. I was curious as to whether they grew in the mountains, and this answered my question:
I had actually seen some at the top of the falls, but they didn’t have any ripe grapes on them. The ones down here did, though, so I loaded up my boat’s cup holder with them. They were about ready to fall off the vine, because whenever I pulled the vine down to reach a cluster, I could hear a bunch of them plunking into the water.
We paddled to an area across the lake from where the shuttle had dropped us off, as we could hear a smaller waterfall dropping in there. It was about 15 feet high but didn’t have much water going over it.
We paddled out into the main channel and headed for our next stop: Devil’s Hole Creek Falls. I was regularly eating grapes as we went along and spitting the seeds into the water. My cup holder was full of lake water, so I dried them off on my shirt before popping them into my mouth and tossing the skins aside. We could hear another small waterfall along the way, but it was nothing terribly interesting.
When we reached the vicinity of Devil’s Hole Creek Falls, it was hard to tell which cove it was in, even with the GPS. We had to get pretty close before we could hear it. It was about 15-20 feet high, but it was so cluttered with deadfall that we had to get right in front of it to see it.
The area at the opening of the inlet looked really nice for snorkeling, but a couple of tour pontoons came just then, so we had to wait for them to leave (we noticed the guy who had shuttled us this morning was driving one of them). After they left, I put on my flippers and snorkeled the sunny area.
I then snorkeled up to the waterfall. When I turned around, there was a large school of fish that had congregated behind me. The water was surprisingly warmer in the shaded cove near the falls than at the sunny inlet.
We got back in our boats and paddled across to the north shore of the lake, as we intended to keep to that side until it was time to cross back to the boat dock. My mom didn’t want to eat lunch too early, and I was out of grapes, so I was on the lookout for more when we reached the north shore. I didn’t see any at first, but we paddled down the beginning of an inlet and I noticed a potential jumping rock of about 5 feet. Just down from that was an overhanging hickory tree tangled with loaded grapevines. I started pulling down on the branches to reach the grapes, and they were raining into our boats. I could also hear them splashing into the water. We were finding random grapes in our boats for a while after this. After I felt I had gotten enough to sustain me until lunch, we made a beeline for the tip of the next peninsula. It opened up into two fairly deep coves, so we paddled in looking for a shaded spot with some shore. The tip of the peninsula had a nice beach, but it was completely unshaded.
We had realized by this point that all the sunscreen was still at the cabin, and my shins were starting to burn. We paddled into a sheltered lagoon and noticed a European hornets’ nest high up in a dead tree. This was my first time seeing one in person, and I was glad I was seeing it from a distance. We looked at it through binoculars, and we could clearly see the large hornets coming and going. Photo by my mom (with her telephoto lens):
The very back of this cove was lined with birdhouses of some kind (wood ducks, maybe?). We could hear a creek coming in, but it was too obscured by rhododendrons to really see anything. While we were in this area, I noticed another vine cluster with tons of ripe grapes on it. I probably didn’t need any more at this point, but it was kind of satisfying to just nab huge clusters of them. These vines were woven through dead trees, so all kinds of wood and lichen debris rained down on me when I pulled the vines down. Grapes were also falling on me, into my boat, and into the water. After I had reloaded again, we paddled back out to the main channel in search of a shaded lunch spot. I took the beach towel I had been using for lumbar support and draped it over my legs to protect them from further sunburn, at the expense of my lower back.
It was a little after 3, and we still hadn't found a shaded lunch spot. We finally noticed a rocky area at the next inlet, and I found a small shaded rock slab with a low jumping rock a short distance away.
We stopped here, and I snorkeled the area below the jumping rock. The rock was only about 4-5 feet high, and I had to jump out to make it to deep water. After this, I got out and ate my sandwich while my mom cooled off in the lake. While I was eating, we saw another possible bat fluttering around above the lake, and it fell into the water a few feet in front of us. I was hesitant to try and help a day-flying bat due to the risk of rabies. It somehow got airborne again and landed on a tree branch about 10 feet in front of me. It hung upside down while it groomed itself. Having worked with bats in college, I’m pretty sure it was an eastern red bat. I took a few pictures of it with my mom’s telephoto lens.
From here, we made a beeline to an island where the shoreline started to move back into the Thompson River arm. We thought we could paddle through the narrow slot between the island and the shore, but there was actually a small strip that wasn’t submerged, so we ended up getting out and pulling our boats over it. From here, we could see the boat ramp across the lake where the truck was parked. Before crossing back over, we paddled along the shore at the boat-in campground, and I snorkeled one last time to cool off.
It took us about 30 minutes to paddle back to the boat ramp. According to my fitness tracker, we had paddled 11.99 miles (should have stayed in and paddled 0.01 more to get to 12). When we got there, I took all my stuff out of my boat, and we rolled it over to try to get all the grapevine leaves and debris out. We then loaded the boats in the truck and drove back to the villa, and I made myself some Bagel Bites for dinner.
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We checked out of the villa this morning at 10 AM. Today was supposed to be the nicest day of the week (upper 80’s with no clouds, and about a 4% chance of rain), so I didn’t want to waste it just driving home. I really wanted some river swimming hole action and not just lake paddling, and there were no convenient stops on the way back that my mom would be able to do, so I decided we should paddle to the lower Thompson River so I could re-experience the swimming holes I had found there in early June of last year, when it had been too cold for swimming to be enjoyable. I knew we were going to get home super late, but screw it; it was the last nice day of summer (or first nice day of fall, technically). My mom was fine with this plan as long as I did the driving after it got dark. It took us about two hours to paddle to the Thompson River. I snacked on my surplus of grapes from yesterday. I tried to stock up on more, but all the ones I found today weren’t as ripe as yesterday’s, which tasted almost like grape bubble gum.
My plan when we got to the river was to hike up to the slide and possibly go down it. I knew that getting there would be too technical for my mom, but I thought she might enjoy the cool rock overhang and cascades near the mouth of the river (all photos of the Thompson River are from last year's visit; see that entry for more pictures and videos of this section of the river).
My mom said she might paddle down and check for waterfalls where Coley Creek fed into the lake while I went to the slide. It was less than a quarter mile upstream, so it didn’t take me very long to get there. I could see grapes all over the ground as I made my way along the muddy scramble trails, but I couldn’t see where the vines were. I hadn’t slid last time because there were some undercut rocks along the side that looked like they could really gash one’s hip, and I came to the same conclusion this time, so I didn't slide.
The water was slightly warmer than last time (65.5 °F according to my thermometer, versus 61 °F last time), so I snorkeled the big swimming hole with the cliffs just downstream of the slide.
I found videos of people jumping here after my previous visit, but I couldn’t see to the bottom because the water was a semi-opaque jade color with only about five feet of visibility. I swam down about 10 feet and didn’t find the bottom. I could see there was a lower ledge about 10 feet above the water, but getting onto it looked sketchy, so I didn’t try it since I was alone.
It was about 1:40 PM by this point, and I told my mom I would be back to my boat by 2. It only took me about five minutes to get back down to the overhang area, and I could see that my mom was still there. She said a pontoon tour group had crossed the river and gone a short distance upstream. I crossed where she had indicated and saw a short path on the other side that I hadn’t noticed last time. It led to the steep sliding waterfall just below the big cliff swimming hole (this actually would have been an easier route to the cliff swimming hole than the high muddy trail on the river right).
My mom decided to wade across the river and try this trail, since it was short. We both swam here, and then headed back down to the kayaks. We paddled to Coley Creek to see if there might be some falling water there, but there was only a small three-foot cascade where it spilled into the lake.
It looked from the topo map like there was probably some falling water just upstream of this, so I got out of my boat and tried to see, but there was too much deadfall and thorny undergrowth to make an up-close investigation worth the effort. I did see that the creek dropped about 30-40 feet a short distance upstream, but the view was too obstructed, so I couldn’t tell if it was an uninterrupted drop or a series of small cascades.
We stopped by Wright Creek Falls on the way back.
The lake was high enough today that you could actually paddle behind the waterfall. I didn’t try it, though, because I didn’t want to get my stuff wet. There were a lot of people there, along with the smell of cigarette smoke and boat exhaust fumes.
Since the lake was up, I decided to scope out the high jumping rock just downstream of the falls that I had deemed too shallow for jumping the last two times I was here. Today, the water beneath it was about 10-12 feet if you jumped out past the initial rock shelf below the ledge. There was a submerged stump, but it was at least 10 feet down. The rock was at least 20 feet high, and my mom was not thrilled that I was considering jumping from it.
I got on top of it via a small trail through the woods, and it looked about the same height as the lower jump at Wolf Creek Falls. I decided not to try this one, because landing in flat lake water from that height was going to smack harder than landing in aerated swimming hole water.
We paddled around the corner, and I jumped from the lower jumping rock a couple of times.
After that, I finished off my stash of grapes as we made the long paddle back across the lake to the boat ramp. We got there around 6 PM. The trip had been a little over 12 miles (including Thompson River scrambling), according to my fitness tracker.
After we loaded the truck, we drove to Hendersonville planning to eat at Cracker Barrel, but it somehow had a 30-minute wait on a Wednesday night), so we drove up the interstate a bit to Fletcher and ate at Ruby Tuesdays (the one in front of the Hampton Inn I had eaten at after the Exit Falls debacle earlier this year). After that, I drove the rest of the way back to Abingdon while we searched in vain the whole way for a non-staticky radio station.
In summary, yesterday’s excursion from Laurel Fork Falls to Devil’s Fork State Park was a pretty good paddle. The temperature was in the 80’s with barely any clouds, and there were plenty of opportunities for swimming, snorkeling, and grapes. Now that I have seen all the named waterfalls of the lake, I would say Laurel Fork Falls is easily the highlight, with Wright Creek Falls (which we saw last year) coming in second. Mill Creek Falls looked like a great swimming spot, but it’s not the most impressive of the waterfalls. Devil’s Fork Falls wasn’t that interesting because it was so cluttered with deadfall that it was hard to get a good view of it. We didn’t really go anywhere new Monday or today, but today was a nice day to revisit some of the highlights from last year. Swimming on the lower Thompson River was much more pleasant than it had been in spring of 2021, so now I can officially give those swimming holes a thumbs up. We saved a few loose ends for a future trip, including the Whitewater River arm of the lake, which apparently has some nice cascades near the mouth of the river.
