Camp Nine & Blue Streak

[flyminion]

Yesterday, Cade and I went to Camp Nine on the Stanislaus River, and today we went to our favorite California swimming hole: Blue Streak on the North Fork Stanislaus River. I’m not dedicating a separate entry to the latter, as I’ve already blogged it three times (in 2017, 2018, and 2019), so this entry is mainly about yesterday’s excursion to Camp Nine.

After the cooler weather in Yosemite the past three days, we were ready for the California swimming hole weather we know and love (i.e., hot AF with a zero percent chance of rain). It looked like yesterday was going to deliver. We decided not to do a fourth day in Yosemite, so we headed up to Murphys to hit Blue Streak. However, Cade wanted to save it for tomorrow when we could get there earlier, which meant we needed a filler excursion for today that was on the way there. I had considered the Preston Falls Trail on the Tuolumne River, but given the unseasonably cold water temperature of the upper section of the river the day before, I decided it would probably also be cold downstream of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. Camp Nine, on the other hand, was near Murphys and on the Stanislaus River (downstream of the confluence of the North and Middle Forks). I’ve known about it since our first California swimming hole marathon in 2017 (a waitress or store clerk in Sonora had recommended it), but I’ve always regarded it as maybe-pile material. The pictures of it in Timothy Joyce’s Swimming Holes of California book show plenty of jumping opportunities, but it didn’t look very geologically interesting. Still, I figure anything in the watershed that gave us Blue Streak deserves a chance, and it’s only a half-mile hike from the road, so we decided to check it out.

We left Buck Meadows around 10:30 AM. We were going to stop by the Rainbow Pools on the South Fork Tuolumne River, which was only about seven minutes from our hotel, but you had to pay to park, and it didn’t look that interesting from what we could see, so we blew it off. We drove the winding roads down into the valley until we finally reached Camp Nine Road. It was a winding, single lane nine-mile road that descended into the deep canyon of the North/Middle Fork Stanislaus River arm of New Melones Lake. It was paved all the way, but pretty rough. It ended at a power station where the river flowed into the lake.



The air temperature was in the low 90’s. We crossed the bridge and took a half-mile trail to the swimming holes. There had been one other car parked at the trailhead, and three guys were standing on the shore of a pool with a sandy beach smoking weed.



I took the water temperature, and it was 64 °F. This didn’t look like the swimming hole from the pictures, so we continued a couple hundred feet upstream and found the area where the river flowed between rocky cliffs up to about 30 feet on both sides.

 

Watch on YouTube

It looked like there were many potential jumps, but I wasn’t thrilled about spending a lot of time with my head under the cold water scoping them out. I climbed down to the riverbank to scope out the downstream end of the cliffs on the river-left side.



The water had a bluish color, but it wasn’t very clear, so I could only see about six feet down. I saw a few rocks jutting out below the cliffs, and I wasn’t sure about jumping here because I couldn’t find the bottom. I wasn’t sure if the ubiquitous blue meant it was super deep, or if there were submerged obstacles just out of sight. I climbed up onto the these cliffs and did a low jump of about six feet where I was reasonably sure it was safe. I then crossed back to where Cade had swam to a small ledge on the tip of the rock peninsula at the end of the river-right section of cliffs.



I scoped out the area around the small ledge and didn’t find any major obstacles to clear, so I warmed up on it for a little while, and then jumped in and swam back to where our backpacks were to reapply sunscreen. After letting it dry, I tried to scope out the area around the downstream-facing end of this peninsula, which offered several potential jumps.



I scoped out an area just above the ledge where Cade had been sitting (he finally made himself get back into the cold water and swim to shore), and it appeared to be free of obstacles. I climbed up onto it and hesitated for a while, because the ledge sloped backward and I couldn’t get my balance (plus I wasn’t looking forward to plunging into the cold water). I finally did it, and then I swam back across the river and snorkeled a little on the other side. I kept having to wait for the sun to emerge from behind the clouds to light up the bottom so I could see it. I then swam back across to dry off for good.

We took the short hike back to the car, and then drove about 35 minutes to Murphys, where we checked into the Murphys Suites. We then ate at Firewood for dinner.
___

This morning, we checked out of the hotel and headed to Blue Streak. This had been our first time staying in Murphys, and it only took about 30 minutes to drive to the trailhead. After yesterday’s excursion to the cold and murky Camp Nine, we were relieved to see that Blue Streak looked and felt like it always did, with the addition of some sort of rope swing hanging from the high jump.

Watch on YouTube

The water was clear and 66.5 °F. We alternated between snorkeling the pool, lounging on the warm rocks, and making phrases with pieces of driftwood that people had carved random words into.



The only new thing I did today was swim into the room behind the waterfall, but I didn’t like it. The water was deep with no place to stand, and I was surrounded by darkened waterfalls raining down from the ceiling. I was afraid to swim out under the waterfall for fear of getting pushed under, so I quickly dove down below the surface and swam out beneath the reach of the current. It took a while to catch my breath after that. I did the medium jump a couple of times before we headed out.

We drove to the Holiday Inn in Jackson, and then got dinner at Mel’s Diner (formerly Mel & Faye’s Diner), which I have always been wanting to go back to after eating there for breakfast on the way to the airport at the end of our 2019 trip.
___

In summary, I was not really a fan of Camp Nine. It was like a colder, murkier version of the “Green Bridge”. The vertical elements were there, but the combination of the cold water and turbidity made it difficult to scope out the jumps. The water quality was no better than an Appalachian swimming hole (in fact, I’ve been to nicer spots in the Linville Gorge). I would liken it to the Guest River Gorge, although the water was not quite as nasty-looking. If the water were crystal clear and/or about ten degrees warmer, then this would be a great jumping spot, but it just wasn’t very pleasant under yesterday’s conditions. Blue Streak, on the other hand, was primo as always. After a streak of bad weather and cold swimming holes, we knew we could count on Blue Streak to make it all better.