Wilson Creek Gorge

I wasted too much time getting started on my mountain swimming hole adventures last year, so this year I wanted to hit the ground running (err, hit the creek swimming?) at the first opportunity. I had been checking the forecast and saw this coming up in the mountains:

In the mountains, just one weekend day above 80 °F with no rain is rare, but BOTH weekend days sunny and above 80? This called for back-to-back swimming hole treks. I booked a room at the Pineola Inn since it is convenient to the Wilson Creek area, the land of swimming holes that are TOTALLY BALLER. As usual, my local friends were either busy or just not feeling enthusiastic enough about mountain swimming holes to make a 3.5 hour drive from Raleigh. Miranda was home in Abingdon visiting her parents and wanted to go to a swimming hole that we had never been to, but under the stipulation that it did not require a long or strenuous hike. I had driven through Wilson Creek Gorge two summers ago on the way to Harper Creek Falls (arguably the best swimming hole in the Wilson Creek area) and snapped a few pictures, but I had not had time to swim in Wilson Creek or explore it thoroughly.

Normally I consider easily accessible swimming holes to be low hanging fruit, but since I have two days to visit swimming holes, I figured one of them did not have to be a grueling expedition. Plus, the gorge had seemed scenic enough on my last visit to warrant further exploration, despite being right off the road. I met up with Miranda at the motel, and after I checked in, we headed to the gorge. The scenic area is a four-mile stretch of Wilson Creek that runs along a dirt road and is basically a continuous expanse of rapids and pools lined with boulders and sloping rock walls. The first thing we noticed when we got there was that the road was basically a dust storm due to the traffic (crowds are one obvious downside of low hanging fruit). It was a constant fog, and all the vegetation lining the road was covered with dust. Miranda’s black car was gray after a couple of minutes

I had examined Wilson Creek on Google Earth and marked the points on my GPS that looked like the best swimming holes. One of the areas was Ten Foot Falls, a class IV rapid which I had somehow missed on my last trip. After about two miles, we parked near where I thought Ten Foot Falls was supposed to be. There was a full parking area where we wanted to pull off, but we were able to park on the side of the road a couple hundred feet ahead. We walked down to the creek from where we had parked, and there was a pool about five feet deep just above a small sliding rock.

( Click here for the full trip report with pictures and videos )

I haven’t decided where I will go tomorrow. Raven Cliff Gorge on Upper Creek is topping my to-do list for this area, and I still have loose ends to tie up at Steels Creek and Gragg Prong. However, Raven Cliff Gorge is not something I would do alone, and I’m not too fond of going to Steels Creek by myself either, so I’m leaning toward Gragg Prong. I am also considering checking out North Harper Creek Falls and Bard Falls on North Harper Creek, but I don’t know if they have swimming holes, and I will be supremely disappointed if I don’t take a dip tomorrow.