Today, Cade and I kicked off our sixth California swimming hole marathon by going to the Seven Teacups on Dry Meadow Creek at its confluence with the Kern River near Johnsondale, California. I tend to think of this more as a redo of our fifth swimming hole marathon in 2023, because many of the places we plan on visiting this year are spots we either missed last time or were unsatisfactory due to cold water from record snowmelt and yucky weather from the remnants of a tropical storm passing through. I haven’t done any swimming hole excursions at home in North Carolina this year due to most of the trails still being in shambles due to Hurricane Helene. I finally got a kayak at the beginning of summer and have been enjoying it on local waters in the Piedmont, so it hasn’t been a total loss, but I was ready for some pristine mountain swimming holes with cool, clear water.

The Seven Teacups had been on my radar since before our first California trip in 2017. We didn’t come down to the Sequoia area until 2018, but we passed up the Teacups for the Middle Fork Tule River, where most of the swimming holes ended up being filled with dirt. We thought about returning to the Sequoia area on our 2023 trip, but Kings Canyon (which helps bridge the gap between Sequoia and Yosemite) was closed, so we blew off this area and just started with Yosemite that time. This time, I decided to finally hit the teacups, so we started our trip off by driving to Visalia and checking into the Hampton last night after I flew into San Francisco. The plan for today was to visit the Seven Teacups, and then maybe swing by the Middle Fork Tule River (which is right by the road) on the way back to see if the swimming holes were still filled with dirt after seven years.

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

In summary, Seven Teacups was a scenic hike with super rugged terrain at the end. The swimming holes per se were kind of meh because the non-rope-accessible ones were mostly shallow and/or on the brinks of sketchy waterfalls. Overall, though, I would say the scenery and remoteness still made it a worthwhile trek. I could tell there were definitely more (and bigger) waterfalls downstream of the teacups. If I came back, I might want to try hiking up the trail on the Kern River and see if we could climb up to the teacups by coming up from the bottom. We didn’t try that this time, since it would be a bummer to make it all the way to the teacups and not be able to access them, but it would be lower stakes on a future excursion since we’ve already been.

I used to wonder why Timothy Joyce put this spot in his Pro Tour book (for more hardcore swimming holes) instead of his main one, as this place seems fairly popular on social media, but now I see why. Hiking to the top of the teacups and viewing them from above is not super technical, but descending the steep gorge walls to the swimming hole would be sketchy for inexperienced rock scramblers. Additionally, the strong currents, slick rocks, and submerged hazards might not be obvious to inexperienced swimming hole goers until they’re in over their heads (literally). I saw a news report about three canyoneers drowning in a whirlpool here last August, and I thought it seemed unusual for a smaller stream to produce such strong currents at a late summer flow, but after swimming here, I can personally confirm this creek somehow pulls it off.

Today, I checked out the waterfalls on the Tuckasegee River in Panthertown Valley in the Nantahala National Forest. This area had been on my back burner since the third edition of Kevin Adams’ North Carolina Waterfalls book came out in 2016. The state is currently experiencing an uncharacteristically long stretch of dry weather, and the rivers in the southwestern part of the state are very low, which opens up some of the larger ones for swimming. I had wanted to take advantage of this by checking out some new spots on the Horsepasture River, but they were too secluded to check out safely, and I couldn’t rope anyone into going with me. I thought about revisiting the touristy parts of the river, but I felt like I should check out something new, so Panthertown it was.

Panthertown Valley has over ten waterfalls, so today I planned to hike downstream along the Tuckasegee River and check out Warden, Jawbone, Riding Ford, Elbow, and Red Butt Falls. A sixth waterfall, Lichen Falls, spills into the river from a small tributary stream about half a mile downstream of Red Butt Falls and is only accessible by creek-walking or bushwhacking. Jawbone Falls was the only one on today’s agenda with a guaranteed swimming hole, but Elbow Falls looked like it might also have a small one. Panthertown’s most popular waterfall, Schoolhouse Falls on Greenland Creek, was only a quarter-mile detour from my route, so I planned to check it out as well, as it was unclear from pictures if the pool at its base was deep enough to be a swimming hole.

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

In summary, I wasn’t really blown away by any of the waterfalls or swimming holes today. I thought they were all kind of mid, as the kids say, but if I had to pick a favorite, it would probably be Warden Falls, which I would not have expected. It was the second best waterfall and the overall nicest spot, since it had a legit swimming hole. The best waterfall per se was probably Jawbone Falls, but its swimming hole was disappointing due to the underwater clutter and lack of flat rocks for lounging. The middle portion of Red Butt Falls passes with a C- for a legit water slide. It wasn’t very fast or steep, but it offered a good 10-15 feet of smooth sliding. I’m not sure I would make a special trip to check out the rest of the Panthertown waterfalls, but I might consider returning to tie up loose ends if I happen to be in the area and need a filler excursion. It might have to be on a day with subpar weather, though, because I kind of regretted passing up a sunny, low-flow day at the Horsepasture River for this.

Today, I returned to Lost Cove Creek for the first time since 2015 to explore the area downstream of Hunt Fish Falls. The last time I visited, I did it as part of a combined hike with the waterfalls of Gragg Prong (a tributary whose confluence is a little less than a mile downstream of Hunt Fish) along the Mountains to Sea Trail (MST). I didn’t check out any other areas of Lost Cove Creek because I assumed Hunt Fish Falls was its only point of interest. However, when I was swimming at Gragg Prong on the return hike, a kid mentioned that there was a good slide just downstream of Hunt Fish Falls, so I’ve always been slightly curious to return and check it out. I subsequently looked on Google Earth, and there did appear to be some possible slides between Hunt Fish Falls and the Gragg Prong confluence. A recent kayaking video on YouTube seemed to confirm this, but it’s hard to tell in high water if a slide is hospitable for butt-sliding in summer flows. There was only one way to find out.

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

In summary, I guess Lost Cove Creek is a one hit wonder after all. I didn’t really find anything interesting downstream of Hunt Fish Falls. There were a few small swimming holes, but they were fairly unremarkable. The swimming hole about a mile upstream of Hunt Fish was also nothing interesting. There were three small slide cascades downstream of the falls, but they weren’t suitable for butt-sliding. It’s possible that the kid who mentioned a slide there was referring to the sloped bedrock along the side of the Hunt Fish Falls plunge pool, as opposed to one of the cascades.

Cade and I decided to spend the last two days of our trip visiting swimming holes on one of our favorite California rivers: the South Yuba. We checked out some new swimming holes near Purdon Crossing yesterday, and we returned to Lemke’s Lagoon and the Highway 49 area today. I’m not dedicating a separate entry to the latter since I’ve already blogged it and don’t have many new developments, so this entry will mainly focus on our explorations at the Purdon Crossing area.

Since yesterday was a Sunday, we figured all parking areas for the river would be crowded. However, Purdon Crossing seems to be slightly less popular (which is not saying much) than Edwards Crossing and Highway 49, so we decided it would be better for a weekend. A while back, I had scanned Google Earth and marked nine points of interest (POIs) on the five-mile stretch of river between Purdon Crossing and Edwards Crossing, numbered in order from downstream to upstream. We checked out POIs 1 and 2 in 2019, and we checked out POIs 5 and 9 in 2021 (6-8 were on private property, so we were unable to get to them). POIs 3 and 4 were never a high priority, as they didn’t look terribly interesting on Google Earth, but I figured we might as well complete our explorations of this section of the river since we were in the area.

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

In summary, POIs 3 and 4 upstream of Purdon Crossing didn’t top anything we’d previously seen on this stretch of the river, but they didn’t disappoint, either. Although some South Yuba swimming holes are more exciting than others, I have yet to encounter one that I thought was lame. POI 4 was much larger than 3 and had a little more going on than I assumed from first glance, but it’s also a little less accessible and doesn’t have as many flat lounging rocks that are reachable without swimming. POI 3 was still fairly large with a low jump, and it was more geologically interesting than 4. Even though these two POIs are accessible by trail, they’re still over two miles from either crossing, apparently making them less crowded even on a weekend. Now that I’ve checked out all my (legally accessible) POIs between Purdon and Edwards Crossings, I would say the highlight is POI 1 (China Dam), followed by POI 5, which is the largest and probably receives fewer visitors on account of it being more than a two-mile hike from the road in either direction. POIs 2-4 aren’t necessarily standouts, but they seem to offer a bit more seclusion since the swimming holes closer to the road draw off the exercise-averse crowds. I think it would be fun to tube this entire section of the river on a future trip, which would allow us to legally(?) float through POIs 6-8.

As for the Highway 49 area, it was nice to return there after five years. I would say Lemke’s Lagoon still ranks as one of my top swimming holes on the South Yuba. It was also cool to finally explore the chute swimming hole above Hoyt’s Crossing. It didn’t have any safe jumps, but there were some fun sliding opportunities down the sloped granite bedrock lining the river.

This concludes our fifth California swimming hole marathon (I hesitate to say “fifth-annual” since we now seem to be in the pattern of doing them every other year). Normally I rank the swimming holes we visited at the end of a trip, but the best ones were places we had already been to, and most of the new ones were bamboozled by less-than-ideal weather and/or hydrological conditions (especially the Yosemite ones), so I will have to suspend judgement on those until I can pay them proper visits in the future.

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.

Today, Cade and I kicked off our fifth California swimming hole marathon by hiking to Chilnualna Falls in Yosemite National Park. This creek was one of the first swimming hole spots I had put on my list when researching our first trip back in 2017, but we didn’t end up making it to Yosemite that year or on any of our other trips for one reason or another. The closest we came was in 2018, but they closed the park due to the Ferguson Fire three days before we arrived, and we couldn’t get out of our vacation rental, so we ended up having to resort to smoky backup plans outside the park. This time, we booked hotels with flexible cancellation policies, as you never know what’s going to happen in California, but I’ll admit that a tropical storm is the last thing I would have expected. The original plan was to do Chilnualna yesterday and do the touristy stuff in Yosemite Valley today, but yesterday's forecast called for scattered showers and a high of 68 °F with the remnants of Hurricane Hilary passing through, so we swapped the days and did the valley yesterday. We were hoping the weather would be better today, since this was our last day staying in Oakhurst (near the southern entrance of the park in Wawona, where Chilnualna Creek is), but it was still partly cloudy and in the low 70’s.

Chilnualna Creek boasts two sections of interest. The lower section near the trailhead features two swimming holes known as The Ledge and Honeymooners, and a short distance upstream from those (as the crow flies) is the Big Pot. I had marked another point of interest on Google Earth about a quarter mile upstream of the Big Pot, but it looked like it might be in the middle of a waterfall, so I was unsure if it would be accessible. The upper section of interest is Chilnualna Falls, which is a three-tiered waterfall about five miles up the trail. The uppermost tier features a large swimming hole at its base, and several teacup cascades above the main drop. It was unclear from pictures if the teacups were accessible, as the terrain around them looked pretty steep depending on the angle, but I was interested to find out. I knew we probably wouldn’t be able to hit all the swimming hole highlights of the creek in one day, so my main objective for today was to check out Chilnualna Falls. This meant we would probably have to come back another time to see everything on the lower section, but I still wanted to check out the Big Pot, as it had been the swimming hole that initially piqued my interest for this creek.

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

In summary, Chilnualna Creek would be a great swimming hole destination in hot, perpetually sunny weather. Today’s hike offered some great views, but the cool, overcast weather made it disappointing and uninviting from a swimming hole standpoint. The increased flow and freezing cold water did not help. Chilnualna Falls was swimmable, but the creek picked up a few more tributary streams between there and the lower swimming holes, making the Big Pot a little too rough. Even though I didn’t really get into any of the pools today (other than the base of upper Chilnualna Falls for a few seconds), I’m thinking the best swimming hole would be the uppermost significant tub above Chilnualna Falls. It was large in diameter, appeared deep, and had a perfect rock diving board (if the water under it is deep, which I didn’t check). I would like to revisit Chilnualna Creek in a more typical year, so I can do a proper exploration of the Big Pot, and also check out The Ledge and Honeymooners. Even though hiking all the way to Chilnualna Falls is kind of a drag, the payoff would be worth the effort in nicer weather, so I would consider going back up there again as well.

After driving up to the mountains last weekend, I was looking forward to a lazy weekend at home, but the forecast turned to totally sunny. However, it's supposed to be pretty rainy after this, so I figured I should take advantage of the nice weather now and chill at home when it’s rainy. Today, I continued my explorations of lower Linville Gorge by checking out some swimming holes near the Conley Cove Trail. I had scanned the 8-ish mile stretch of river between the Conley Cove Trail and Lake James on Google Earth and marked 14 points of interest (POIs), numbered in order from downstream to upstream. Last weekend, I checked out POIs 1-3, which are the farthest downstream. POIs 4-12 are located on the ~3.5 mile stretch of river between the Pinch-In Trail (on the downstream end) and the Conley Cove Trail (on the upstream end), and 13-14 are just upstream of the Conley Cove Trail. The river is easier to see from the Linville Gorge Trail (LGT) when the leaves are off the trees, so I had originally planned to scout out POIs 4-12 over Christmas break, but I got sick and wasn't able to. I decided to go ahead and knock out a few of the upstream POIs on a summer out-and-back hike, which will leave more time to explore the ones in the middle on a future thru-hike. My plan for today was to definitely check out POIs 11-14, and possibly continue as far downstream as POI 9 depending on how I was doing on time. I decided to start on the upstream end and work my way downstream, since it looked like POIs 13-14 would lose sunlight earlier in the day.

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

In summary, I found some legit swimming holes today, but as with last weekend, none were terribly interesting. POI 14 was probably the most geologically striking by this excursion’s standards, but it’s just carry-over from Cathedral Gorge. If you’re going to come this far, then you might as well swim at the superior Cathedral just upstream (granted, for all its awesomeness, Cathedral loses sunlight fairly early in the afternoon). POI 12 was probably the runner-up for today, boasting a potentially doable jump of about 15 feet, but you’d have to jump out pretty far or you might break a leg. POIs 9, 11, and 13 were also legit swimming holes but were basically just deep spots in the river with no bells or whistles.

Today’s excursion has me thinking twice about trying to do a thru-hike from the Pinch-In to the Conley Cove Trail. In hindsight, I (or my car, rather) probably would have been better off if I had used the Spence Ridge Trail and just hiked the extra couple of miles. My car made it through today (although it took some abuse), but that was partly because the road was bone-dry. I don’t think I would attempt the section of road between the Cabin and Pinch-In Trails again without four-wheel drive, and that would mean wrangling two people with four-wheel drive vehicles. And from what I've seen so far, the swimming holes on this section of the river haven’t been terribly interesting, so it may not be worth the effort. As for the Conley Cove Trail itself, I would say it was a tad more strenuous than the Spence Ridge Trail, but not as bad as the Devil’s Hole, Cabin, and Unnamed (White Oak Stand) Trails.

Today, I decided to begin my swimming hole explorations of the lower section of Linville Gorge (i.e., downstream of the Conley Cove Trail). I didn’t bother with this section of the gorge last summer because I hadn’t really researched it, and I assumed the river would be relatively mundane through this area. In the upper section of the gorge, the river snakes around several peninsulas while losing over 1000 feet of elevation between Linville Falls and Conley Cove over near-continuous class III-V rapids, which is conducive to geologically interesting swimming holes in low summer flows. Below Conley Cove, the river still loses about 700 feet of elevation over the 8-ish miles to Lake James, but it follows a relatively straight path through boulder-strewn areas with few named rapids. I had scanned Google Earth and marked 14 points of interest (POIs) in the lower gorge, which are numbered from downstream to upstream. My original plan was to do a winter hike to scout them out and determine which ones warranted further exploration in the summertime, since the summer foliage makes it difficult to see the river from the Linville Gorge Trail (LGT). However, I got sick over Christmas break, and the weather/my schedule were uncooperative after that, so I didn’t end up getting down there.

Accessing the gorge floor downstream of Conley Cove is more practical (er, direct) from the west rim, where there are four rim-to-floor trails (that I know of): The North Carolina Mountains to Sea Trail (MST), White Oak Stand Trail (aka the Unnamed Trail), Pinch-In Trail, and Conley Cove Trail. POIs 1-3 are in the two-ish mile stretch between White Oak and Pinch In, 4-12 are in the 3-mile stretch between Pinch-In and Conley Cove, and 13-14 are just upstream of Conley Cove. I’ll still probably save 4-12 for a winter scouting trip, given the impracticality of checking out 9 POIs without a clear view, but I figured I could do POIs 1-3 as an out-and-back hike from the White Oak Stand Trail. Allen T. Hyde’s book The Linville Gorge and Wilson Creek Hikers Guide: An Introduction also mentions two spots in this section called Blue Hole and Lunch Rock, so those were on my to-do list as well. I chose to do this hike today because I didn’t have any major expectations. I was mainly just hoping to find a nice pool where I could lie around and catch tan. The flow as of this morning was about 90 cfs, which was a bit higher than any of my previous excursions, but I wasn’t necessarily concerned since this would likely be a less turbulent stretch of river.

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

In summary, POIs 1-3 and the Blue Hole were all legit swimming holes, but they were all kind of similar: large pools with rocky areas on the opposite side that offered low but somewhat sketchy jumps of 7-10 feet. I would say the best overall was POI 2, followed by POI 1. POI 3 required a slight bushwhack to get to, and the Blue Hole was mostly lined with herbaceous vegetation on the river-right side, making access annoying. Given that the swimming holes are fairly mundane, and the hike to access them is grueling, I would say they’re not worth the effort of a day trip. They are all located behind primitive campsites, so they would make nice bonuses for campers and backpackers, but I wouldn’t recommend making a special trip for them if your main objective is to go swimming.

Today, I finished up my explorations of North Harper Creek. I normally wrap up my swimming hole explorations around the beginning of September, since it’s usually too cool in the mountains for swimming to be pleasant after that, but I saw an unseasonably warm, dry stretch of weather coming up this week, so I decided to take the whole week off work to take advantage of it. After all, I haven’t really taken a legit vacation this summer due to the lack of dry weather here in the Carolinas, and airfare to California being super steep.

When I explored North Harper Creek last summer, I spent two weekends checking out some points of interest (POIs) I had marked on Google Earth. The first weekend was cut short when I had to abort the hike to get help for a woman having an allergic reaction to yellow jacket stings. On the second weekend, I managed to check out all of the remaining POIs I had marked, but it seemed like there might be some interesting parts of the creek that were not visible on Google Earth. I had marked seven POIs on North Harper Creek (numbered in order from upstream to downstream), and it was starting to get dark by the time I got to POI 1. After that, the trail rose high above the creek, and it sounded pretty busy between POI 1 and Chestnut Cove Branch Falls. I also had not marked any POIs upstream of North Harper Creek Falls, but there were almost certainly some cascades there judging by the noise and the amount of elevation gain (but I couldn’t see them because it was almost completely dark). My objectives for today were to creek-walk the area between POI 1 and Chestnut Cove Branch Falls, and check out the area upstream of North Harper Creek Falls in daylight.

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

In summary, I didn’t find anything super noteworthy on the section of North Harper Creek I explored today. The section of the creek between POI 1 and Chestnut Cove Branch Falls was pretty uneventful, but the section above North Harper Creek Falls proved to be worth a look. There were no major swimming holes (a couple of small pools that may or may not have been deep), but there were a few cascades that were nicer than any of my marked POIs, a couple of which were at least 15 feet high. I would say the nicest one was the one that I had to scoot down the fallen tree to get to. Normally I would be bummed about not finding a swimming hole, but given the cool weather today, I was fine with just doing a creek walk.

Today, I finally got to go to Cave Falls in Linville Gorge, which has been on my to-do list for a while. I had tried to get to it alone last month by swimming through the Bob Ross Gorge and climbing up the rocks next to a rapid/small waterfall the boaters call Seal Launch Portage (aka A Good Way to Die), but I decided it was too sketchy to do alone (as with my previous entries, all rapid names are per American Whitewater and A Wet State). I’ve been trying to find people online who are into this sort of thing, and I networked with this guy Chris from Asheville who said he liked intense hikes and might be up for it, so we planned to meet up and tackle it today. Unlike my previous trips to this section of the gorge where I had used the moderate Spence Ridge Trail, today we would be using the more strenuous but more direct Devil’s Hole Trail, which loses about 1000 feet of elevation in a about a mile and meets the river about a quarter mile upstream of Cave Falls.

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

In summary, Cave Falls is a pretty cool spot. It has a large swimming hole with a low jump of about six feet, and it’s surrounded by some pretty impressive geology. From what I’ve seen so far, I would say the best swimming hole in the gorge is easily Cathedral, both in terms of swimming hole functionality and geological grandeur, but Cave Falls is a contender for runner-up, along with the Bob Ross Gorge and Babel Tower Falls (the latter actually isn’t one of my top picks, but it’s a fan favorite, so I felt obligated to throw it in there). I was hoping to tie up a few loose ends from my winter scouting trip (e.g., Jailhouse) today, but we were unable to do so since the rain cut things short. After experiencing the Devil’s Hole Trail for the first time, I can say one thing for sure: I did NOT skip leg day.