Emerald Pools

For day four of our trip, Cade and I returned to the Emerald Pools on the South Yuba River to do a proper exploration. We had briefly stopped here on the way back from Island Lake on our 2017 trip, but we didn’t get to Emerald Pools until 6 PM after the sun had set. The water was 54 °F that day, which was in no way going to be pleasant for swimming. The main reason I had been wanting to get back to Emerald Pools is that I discovered it was the location of a mystery swimming hole I had seen in a YouTube video prior to our first trip in 2017. The video features two swimming holes, one of which I recognized as God’s Bath. The second swimming hole looked really enticing – clear blue water, a side waterfall spilling in, and numerous ledges for jumping, but I could not for the life of me figure out where it was. I spent hours (okay, weeks) on Google Earth scanning pretty much every major California river I could think of to no avail. Finally, after our 2018 trip, the uploader revealed the location as Emerald Pools. With that massive clue, I was easily able to find the mystery pool on Google Earth, but I never would have guessed I had been so close to it. I suppose the main spots, known as the Lower Emerald Pools (where the jumpers go) and the Upper Emerald Pools (where families go), had distracted me from the lesser-known pools on that stretch of the river.

I had planned to tie up this loose end during our 2019 trip, but we ended up blowing it off that year because we had hit a string of unpleasantly cold swimming holes, and we knew the Emerald Pools were not going to improve that situation. The pools are only about a mile downstream from the Lake Spaulding dam, which means the water is cold year-round since it doesn't have much time to warm up after being released from the bottom of the lake. On top of that, both 2017 and 2019 were record snowfall years where the rivers were colder than normal. However, 2021 has been the opposite (record low snowfall and warmer water than normal), plus the area is currently under an excessive heat warning, so I figured if there was ever a year Emerald Pools would have a tolerable water temperature, this would be it.

We had originally planned to revisit Royal Gorge today (which entails a strenuous 7 mile round trip hike) since it’s a Sunday and Emerald Pools is highly popular, but yesterday’s hike kind of destroyed Cade, so we decided to swap the days and just deal with the weekend crowds since the hike to Emerald Pools is less than a mile (although it does entail some minor rock climbing).

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

In summary, Emerald Pools is a great cliff jumping spot, so it’s no surprise that it’s one of the most popular spots in northern California. The cliff walls are so textured that there is a jump from pretty much any height you could want up to 70-ish feet. However, I wouldn’t really call it a great swimming hole per se because the water is too cold for a swim to be enjoyable. Even at today’s unusually “warm” water temperatures, it was really only tolerable for jumping in and quickly getting out. The water also wasn’t very emerald-y today due to all the brown filth swirling around, but I suppose that’s the price one pays for the water temperature not being in the 50’s. I would likely hit up the Emerald Pools from time to time if I were a local, but it’s probably not a place I would return to when visiting from out of state unless I were with someone who wanted to go. If I did go back, I would like to explore the rest of the box canyon downstream of the mystery pool (I guess I can stop calling it that, now that it’s no longer a mystery).