Linville Gorge - Adam's Wall & Bob Ross Gorge

Today, I made my third descent into Linville Gorge to look for new (to me) swimming holes. After visiting Babel Tower Falls in 2017 and Cathedral in 2019, my next best bet for a primo swimming hole seemed to be a waterfall/rapid called Cave Falls (as in my previous Linville Gorge entries, all rapid names are per American Whitewater and A Wet State). As with Cathedral, Cave Falls had been on my backburner until someone else posted a trip report confirming there was indeed a legit swimming hole there. However, this person’s trip report made it sound like there was no direct access to Cave Falls from the Linville Gorge Trail (LGT), which runs along the river throughout the gorge, but sometimes from high above, meaning that a river walk and full body swim through potentially strong currents could be required to get there. Since I was soloing today’s hike, I decided to set my sights on a different potential swimming hole, Adam’s Wall, but I still planned to do some recon for a future Cave Falls trek while I was down there. Adam’s Wall is a rapid that on Google Earth appears to have a large plunge pool, and Allen T. Hyde’s book The Linville Gorge and Wilson Creek Hikers Guide: An Introduction mentions a side trail down to a large swimming hole in this vicinity. I also ended up checking out two swimming holes that weren’t on today's agenda (Dr. Shoosh rapid and the Bob Ross Gorge) when I stumbled upon them during my scouting for Cave Falls.

One reservation I had going into today was that the river level was a little higher than it had been on my previous visits. Today had a gage height of 1.22 feet and a flow of 78 cfs (cubic feet per second). When I visited Babel Tower Falls, the river was around 1.07 ft/60 cfs, which seemed a little more swift than ideal, and the water was murky, making it impossible to scope out jumps. Since that excursion, I had decided I would only go to swimming holes on the Linville River when the stage was less than 1.00 feet, but that has become an exceedingly rare occurrence in the past few years. I started to wonder if the swiftness and turbidity I had encountered in 2017 were a water level thing or just a Babel Tower Falls thing. There was only one way to find out, and since I would be crossing the river at the Spence Ridge swimming hole (which I had seen and photographed in 2019 when the river was at 0.99 ft/39 cfs), I would have a basis for comparison.

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

In summary, Adam’s Wall (which was initially my main point of interest for the day) was a legit swimming hole, but fairly unremarkable for Linville Gorge. It was basically just a large pool with no significant cliffs or ledges next to it. Dr. Shoosh was a cool rapid with a legit swimming hole, but the swimming hole itself was also lacking in bells and whistles. The Bob Ross Gorge (the high box canyon just upstream of Dr. Shoosh) unexpectedly ended up being the swimming hole highlight of the day. I had seen it in kayaking videos, but I always assumed (incorrectly) that it was shallow in summer flows. I’ll have to scope it out for potential jumps on a future visit when I’m with other people. As for my secondary objective of finding a direct path to Cave Falls, it looks like there isn’t one. The only practical way to reach it would be to boulder scramble upstream from Dr. Shoosh (without a backpack, since getting past the Bob Ross Gorge involves a full body swim), or downstream from the Devil’s Hole Trail, which I hear also involves immersing oneself in water. Cave Falls is still topping my list of things to check out in the gorge, and Wilson Creek Cameo is now on the list. Accessing Wilson Creek Cameo would entail a river-level scramble all the way from Adam’s Wall to Dr. Shoosh, but I would be up for it if I could find someone willing to do it. As for the water conditions, today’s water level was noticeably higher than last time, but the water clarity was decent, and most of the larger swimming holes were still swimmable. It's good to know that I can be slightly less picky about the water flow on future excursions.
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Update: I checked out Wilson Creek Cameo and Cave Falls in 2022. Click the links for those trip reports.