Camp Nine & Blue Streak

Yesterday, Cade and I went to Camp Nine on the Stanislaus River, and today we went to our favorite California swimming hole: Blue Streak on the North Fork Stanislaus River. I’m not dedicating a separate entry to the latter, as I’ve already blogged it three times (in 2017, 2018, and 2019), so this entry is mainly about yesterday’s excursion to Camp Nine.

After the cooler weather in Yosemite the past three days, we were ready for the California swimming hole weather we know and love (i.e., hot AF with a zero percent chance of rain). It looked like yesterday was going to deliver. We decided not to do a fourth day in Yosemite, so we headed up to Murphys to hit Blue Streak. However, Cade wanted to save it for tomorrow when we could get there earlier, which meant we needed a filler excursion for today that was on the way there. I had considered the Preston Falls Trail on the Tuolumne River, but given the unseasonably cold water temperature of the upper section of the river the day before, I decided it would probably also be cold downstream of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. Camp Nine, on the other hand, was near Murphys and on the Stanislaus River (downstream of the confluence of the North and Middle Forks). I’ve known about it since our first California swimming hole marathon in 2017 (a waitress or store clerk in Sonora had recommended it), but I’ve always regarded it as maybe-pile material. The pictures of it in Timothy Joyce’s Swimming Holes of California book show plenty of jumping opportunities, but it didn’t look very geologically interesting. Still, I figure anything in the watershed that gave us Blue Streak deserves a chance, and it’s only a half-mile hike from the road, so we decided to check it out.

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

In summary, I was not really a fan of Camp Nine. It was like a colder, murkier version of the “Green Bridge”. The vertical elements were there, but the combination of the cold water and turbidity made it difficult to scope out the jumps. The water quality was no better than an Appalachian swimming hole (in fact, I’ve been to nicer spots in the Linville Gorge). I would liken it to the Guest River Gorge, although the water was not quite as nasty-looking. If the water were crystal clear and/or about ten degrees warmer, then this would be a great jumping spot, but it just wasn’t very pleasant under yesterday’s conditions. Blue Streak, on the other hand, was primo as always. After a streak of bad weather and cold swimming holes, we knew we could count on Blue Streak to make it all better.