Rock Creek

For Day 4 of this year’s California swimming hole marathon, Cade and I went to Rock Creek, a tributary of the North Fork Feather River outside of Oroville, CA. This was sort of part 2 of my “what if?” curiosities from Day 5 of our 2017 trip. On that day, we intended to go to Seven Falls but couldn’t because the road was closed, so I had to choose between Curtain Falls and Rock Creek as a backup plan. I went with Curtain Falls and couldn't decide afterwards if the swimming hole was really worth the effort, so I have always wondered if Rock Creek would have been a better choice. Rock Creek has numerous swimming holes. Timothy Joyce’s Swimming Holes of California book lists a lower, middle, and upper Rock Creek. Middle Rock Creek seems to be the most popular from what I have seen, as it boasts a large, deep pool of crystal clear water and a natural water slide. It looked like there was going to be too much at Rock Creek to see in one day, so we opted to start off at Middle Rock Creek and play it by ear from there. Upper Rock Creek sounded like it would be quite a challenge to get to, so while it didn’t look like it would be a highlight swimming hole, I sort of wanted to get to it just for street cred.

After eating breakfast and stopping by Wal-Mart in Chico to get a replacement pair of sunglasses to preemptively replace my current pair that is on the verge of breaking, we drove about an hour to Rock Creek. We drove through an area damaged by the Camp Fire last year, and it looked pretty devastating. There were a lot of homes that were destroyed to the foundation (I noticed one where only the chimney remained), and it looked like people in the area were mostly living in motorhomes. The damage ended only a few miles away from the confluence of Rock Creek with the North Fork Feather River.

The canyon that the North Fork Feather River flows through was pretty spectacular and almost rivaled the scale and ruggedness of Kings Canyon, which we drove through last year (I didn't blog that day since we didn't go swimming). There were areas where the road was at least 1000 feet above the canyon floor. We had to drive through several tunnels as we neared Rock Creek. When we pulled in, we went under a train trestle and passed up the trail for lower Rock Creek, which was close to the entrance. We took the gravel road up the hill for a couple of switchbacks until we found a small parking area with enough room for about four cars. There were already two vehicles there. One was for some school, and the other was for some sort of adventure/discovery group. Before we got started, I decided to only take a small gym bag, as my regular backpack would be a huge pain for the amount of boulder scrambling and ledge scaling that probably lay ahead.

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

In summary, I rather enjoyed Rock Creek, even though boulder scrambling normally gets on my nerves. Most of the strenuous and technical stuff we did today was optional. The granite rocks here were textured enough that they were pretty easy to maneuver around on, and there was a good mix of small and large rocks that created incremental steps to various height gaps when we needed to get up or down. I joked that the two most important exercises one should do to prepare for Rock Creek are dips and lunges, as I definitely used my arms just as much as I used my legs to get around today. I did do a couple of things today that were probably sketchier than I should have done in such a secluded, rugged area, but the only casualty was my swimsuit. It’s kind of sad that it won’t be making it home from this trip after all of the swimming holes it has been to with me. I now only have one swimsuit left in my suitcase for this trip, and it has no liner. We are planning to do another boulder scramble at Candy Rock the day after tomorrow, and I’m thinking I might have to do that one in my underwear, since my second swimsuit doesn’t have a liner.

Anyway, back to the swimming hole situation at Rock Creek. The swimming holes here were gorgeous and crystal clear, ranging from emerald green to sapphire blue. The water temperature was cool, but not so cold that it took the fun out of swimming (at least not for me). It was kind of a bummer that the slide had a downed tree across it, though. I would say Middle Rock Creek is the highlight swimming hole. Upper Rock Creek was nice, but I would really only recommend it if you just want to do it for the adventure and satisfaction of conquering it, as the swimming hole per se isn’t necessarily any better than Middle Rock Creek. Getting there was basically a half-mile jungle-jim of boulders and logs. We didn’t get to see anything below Middle Rock Creek today (other than some obscured views from the cliffs above), so I would like to come back in the future and explore Lower Rock creek.

So, did I make the right choice two years ago when I chose Curtain Falls over Rock Creek? I would say yes, because I eventually got to do both, and I wouldn’t have actually known that Curtain Falls was more trouble than it was worth without having gone there. Curtain Falls looks more impressive in pictures, so I probably would have lived with a bigger ghost if I had passed that one up.