Upper Candy Rock

For the sixth and seventh days of our 2019 California swimming hole marathon, Cade and I decided to devote two days to the North Fork Stanislaus River to accomplish our two objectives for that area: finding an elusive swimming hole upstream of Candy Rock, and giving Blue Streak (one of our favorite swimming holes) our undivided attention. Today was devoted to the former objective, which we knew would require a time-consuming boulder scramble and creek walk.

This entry is a follow-up to the entries “Candy Rock & Blue Streak” from 2017 and “Candy Rock & Blue Streak - Part 2” from 2018. To save you the trouble of reading those, here is a brief recap of our previous adventures in the Candy Rock area that led up to today’s excursion.

PREVIOUSLY, AT CANDY ROCK:
On the last day of our first California swimming hole marathon in 2017, Cade and I visited the swimming holes Candy Rock and Blue Streak on the North Fork Stanislaus River for the first time (Cade had actually been to Candy Rock once before, but not Blue Streak). We liked Blue Streak a lot, but we thought Candy Rock was just okay. After returning home from that trip, I realized we had not actually seen the spot from the photo that initially attracted me to Candy Rock (hereafter, “the mystery photo”, which you can see here). I e-mailed the person who took the photo, Swimming Holes of California author Timothy Joyce, and he said that spot was further upstream than the main Candy Rock swimming hole, but he did not remember the exact location as he had taken the photo in passing about ten years ago. I also noticed from Google Earth that there was a large pool just above Candy Rock that we had somehow missed on our first visit, so I wanted to go back and check it out. I couldn’t find anything that matched the spot from the mystery photo on Google Earth, except for possibly one pool about half a mile upstream of Candy Rock with no trail access.

We returned to the area in 2018 near the end of that trip. We wanted to hit Blue Streak for a quick pick-me-up after missing out on Yosemite earlier that week due to the Ferguson Fire and having to resort to backup plans. However, I also wanted to venture down to Candy Rock to take a stab at finding the pool from the mystery photo. We found the pool we had missed just upstream of Candy Rock in 2017, and we started boulder scrambling upstream to the mystery pool, but after making it only a quarter of the way there in 20 minutes, it became obvious that we would not have time to see the mystery pool and go to Blue Streak in the same day. Cade just wanted to get to Blue Streak, so I blew off finding the mystery pool on that trip. It was obvious that we would have to devote two separate days to this area if we didn’t want finding the mystery pool to keep us from getting to Blue Streak.


AND NOW…

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

In summary, we found a few small swimming holes and one big one, but none of them were the pool from the mystery photo. That means either we did not go far enough upstream, or that the photo is from a different location (it actually looks more like Rock Creek than the North Fork Stanislaus River). The main pool we found upstream of Candy Rock was a legit swimming hole. It was large, deep, and had a couple of good jumps. However, I felt uneasy there because of how treacherous the approach was, and the difficulty of a potential rescue in that area if something happened. Unlike Rock Creek, which somehow seemed a little safer, the boulders and rock faces at the North Fork Stanislaus River are a lot more smooth and slippery, and one slip could lead to big trouble in such a remote area not accessible by trail. So yeah, the main pool we found today was a good swimming hole, but it seems kind of pointless to bother with such an arduous and treacherous approach when the superior and more accessible Blue Streak is available downstream on the same river.