Upper Wilson Creek
Jun. 1st, 2024 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flyminion
Today, Brian and I walked upper Wilson Creek between FR 192 and Edgemont Road. We had previously hiked the Wilson Creek Trail in 2018, and creek-walked the section of Wilson Creek between the trail and FR 192 in 2019. During the latter excursion, we had briefly looked at the creek just downstream of the Edgemont Road bridge and saw that it had some small sliding cascades and was hemmed by cliffs as it quickly dropped out of sight. We had always been curious to return and walk the creek between FR 192 and Edgemont Road to see if there was anything interesting there, but five years went by and we never got around to it. On our previous excursions, we had checked out 13 out of 15 points of interest (POIs) I marked on Google Earth as potential swimming holes. POIs 14 and 15 are upstream of FR 192, and there is no good satellite imagery upstream of POI 15, so the upstream half of that section has always been a mystery. I wasn’t expecting to find any significant swimming holes there, but I thought there could be some nice cascades since the creek loses over 600 feet of elevation between the two roads.I’ve noticed that the first weekend in June is almost always dry, which held true this year, although it wasn’t particularly warm in the mountains (today's forecast called for mid 60s). Since the weather wasn’t ideal for swimming, I decided now was the time to check out upper Wilson, since I wasn’t expecting to find any significant swimming holes.
I left Greensboro this morning around 10:20am and met Brian at the Beacon Heights parking area on the Blue Ridge Parkway. We then drove down Edgemont Road and left his car at the Wilson Creek crossing, and then we left mine at the crossing of Wilson Creek and FR 192. Now that I have a Crosstrek, I noticed there were a lot of other Subarus out there, including an Outback parked at the bridge over Wilson Creek.
We started by walking through the large culvert under the road and headed upstream. There was nothing terribly interesting before POI 14, which consisted of two small cascades. The lower one had a shallow pool at the base.
The water was so cold it was physically painful to get into. After attempting to check the depth with a stick, I quickly ran through it, and it was about 4-5 feet deep at its deepest point.
The upper cascade was a slide into a small rock pool with a log in it. I slid down the lower part, which was only a few feet high. The water was about shoulder deep where I slid in, but it was so cold that I didn’t stay in long enough to fully scope it out.
Here are a couple of small cascades and pools we encountered between POIs 14 and 15. I didn’t get into any of them, but they didn’t look deep enough to be over my head.
POI 15 was a small cascade into a shallow pool.
We heard people, and we looked upstream and saw someone at the next cascade. We figured whatever was up there must be a highlight spot. When we got there, we discovered a legit swimming hole with a large, overhanging rock ledge.
There were three teenagers there. I said we were surprised to see anyone up here. They said this was the best spot on this section of the creek, and they had also seen someone fishing.
We walked under the rock ledge and crossed the creek along the lower lip of the cascade. I took the water temperature here, and it was 54 °F. I eased into the water to see how deep it was, and it ended up being over my head. I quickly got out, and then I got my diving mask to look under the water while standing where it was about waist deep. It looked about 8-9 feet at the deepest point. A jump of about 10 feet from the ledge may have been possible with a precision landing, but the water was too cold for me to be interested in swimming around and fully scoping out the depth. It was shallow right underneath the ledge, though, so you would have to jump past the cascade.
From here, the creek was very similar to Little Wilson Creek between Edgemont Road and 221. There were no more legit swimming holes, but we saw numerous sliding cascades ranging from about 5 to 12 feet high, some with pools that were probably chest deep or shallower. Here are a few of them:
As we made our way up the creek, we saw the guy with the fishing pole who the teens had mentioned, but he was always one or two cascades ahead of us, and we never caught up to him. He appeared to be using a trail that paralleled the creek. We used the trail to bypass a couple of obstacles, but it seemed to veer away from the creek and bypass too much, so we mostly stuck to the creek bed.
This was the only other cascade we found with a deep-ish pool. I put a large stick in, and it was about 5.5 feet deep.
Upstream of this, I saw a tributary stream coming in on the river-right, so we walked up it a few feet and saw a large rock overhang about 30 feet high. I couldn’t see how the creek made its way around this, so we climbed up a small cascade at the confluence and walked about 100 feet back to investigate. There ended up being a 25-30 foot waterfall under the overhang, but the flow wasn’t very strong given the small size of the stream.
We returned to Wilson Creek proper and surmounted the last few slides before the Edgemont Road bridge.
I thought the creek walk was going to be about a mile, but it ended up being 2.4 miles with an elevation gain of 657 feet, according to my fitness tracker.
We got into Brian’s car, and he drove me back to my car. We passed the guy with the fishing pole walking along FR 192, so I’m guessing there must be some sort of trail access from the road. When we got to my car, I went down to the creek to wash my feet off and change into my dry shoes. I could hear kids screaming and horsing around, and when I got down to the creek, I could see they were playing in the culvert under the road. After I changed into my dry shoes, the fishing pole guy showed up and ended up being the driver of the Outback that was parked there.
I drove back to Greensboro and ate pizza with my stepmom, and then I continued the rest of the way back to Raleigh.
In summary, this section of Wilson Creek didn't have anything remarkable, but there was one legit swimming hole, and a 25-30 foot waterfall about 100 feet back on a small side-stream. Other than that, the creek was basically a series of small sliding cascades and shallow pools, similar to Little Wilson Creek upstream of Edgemont Road. It did seem like the slides were starting to get bigger toward the upstream end of the walk, so it’s possible there might be higher cascades upstream, between Edgemont Road and the Blue Ridge Parkway. However, I probably wouldn’t check that out unless I really needed something to do.
