Middle Creek

Today, I went to Middle Creek near Mount Mitchell. I was hoping to do something bigger and bolder, like one of the four major rivers (i.e., the Whitewater, Thompson, Horsepasture, and Toxaway Rivers) that drain into Lake Jocassee, which all have lots of waterfalls and swimming holes. I don’t think any of those have their own gages, but I looked at the state map to get a general idea of how high the rivers were in the southwestern part of the state. Green and especially orange dots (normal and low flow, respectively) are good, but light and dark blue dots mean the rivers are high, and southwest NC was a swath of blue, which meant I would need a smaller waterway for safe swimming today.

I admittedly hadn’t done my homework on the area of the state west of Boone, as I hadn’t expected to have to make do with North Carolina this year, so I didn’t know of many swimming holes on smaller streams that I hadn’t already been to. Earlier this week, I noticed that Kevin Adams had posted some waterfalls on his website that hadn’t made the third edition of his North Carolina Waterfalls book, and Middle Creek caught my attention. It had a number of waterfalls, a couple of which looked like they had deep pools at the bottom. The waterfalls of interest (in order from downstream to upstream) were Lower Middle Creek Falls, Squawroot Falls, and Middle Creek Falls. The latter didn’t appear to have a very big plunge pool, but it was so close to the other two that it looked worth checking out. There are several more waterfalls beyond Middle Creek Falls, but there is no trail to them, and they didn’t appear to have swimming holes, so I figured they probably wouldn’t be worth the effort. I had also scanned Google Earth and marked five points of interest (POIs) downstream of the main waterfalls. Well, I had actually marked six, but the sixth one ended up just being part of Lower Middle Creek Falls.

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

In summary, I didn’t see anything remarkable on Middle Creek, but Lower Middle Creek Falls had a legit swimming hole that, while unremarkable, definitely had secret spot appeal. I doubt many people are going to make the effort to bushwhack to it, let alone hike that far on the narrow path. Squawroot Falls also had a swimming hole, but the pool wasn’t very big. Middle Creek Falls was probably the most impressive waterfall of the day; it looked kind of like Upper Catawba Falls, but with less water going over it. POIs 1-4 weren’t terribly interesting, but at least my curiosity is satisfied. The rocks at Middle Creek were pretty slippery today, making this a somewhat treacherous outing, especially alone (I didn’t see anyone all day). I was kind of over the bushwhacking and ‘paths of least resistance’ by the end of the day, although I think if I had blown off the POIs and just went to the three named waterfalls, I might not have gotten quite as fed up with it.