Upper Wilson Creek

Today, Brian and I walked upper Wilson Creek between FR 192 and Edgemont Road. We had previously hiked the Wilson Creek Trail in 2018, and creek-walked the section of Wilson Creek between the trail and FR 192 in 2019. During the latter excursion, we had briefly looked at the creek just downstream of the Edgemont Road bridge and saw that it had some small sliding cascades and was hemmed by cliffs as it quickly dropped out of sight. We had always been curious to return and walk the creek between FR 192 and Edgemont Road to see if there was anything interesting there, but five years went by and we never got around to it. On our previous excursions, we had checked out 13 out of 15 points of interest (POIs) I marked on Google Earth as potential swimming holes. POIs 14 and 15 are upstream of FR 192, and there is no good satellite imagery upstream of POI 15, so the upstream half of that section has always been a mystery. I wasn’t expecting to find any significant swimming holes there, but I thought there could be some nice cascades since the creek loses over 600 feet of elevation between the two roads.

I’ve noticed that the first weekend in June is almost always dry, which held true this year, although it wasn’t particularly warm in the mountains (today's forecast called for mid 60s). Since the weather wasn’t ideal for swimming, I decided now was the time to check out upper Wilson, since I wasn’t expecting to find any significant swimming holes.

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

In summary, this section of Wilson Creek didn't have anything remarkable, but there was one legit swimming hole, and a 25-30 foot waterfall about 100 feet back on a small side-stream. Other than that, the creek was basically a series of small sliding cascades and shallow pools, similar to Little Wilson Creek upstream of Edgemont Road. It did seem like the slides were starting to get bigger toward the upstream end of the walk, so it’s possible there might be higher cascades upstream, between Edgemont Road and the Blue Ridge Parkway. However, I probably wouldn’t check that out unless I really needed something to do.