Adventures of a swimming hole aficionado

This past week, I was still living with the ghost of not taking advantage of the nice weather two weekends ago, as I thought the rest of July was going to be rainy in the mountains, as is usually the case. However, it looked like this Saturday was going to have only a 20% chance of rain, so I felt obligated to get up to the mountains and do something. Topping the to-do list for the Grandfather Mountain area is to finish the Wilson Creek Trail hike that I did with Brian last year, but he was going to be out of town this weekend, so that was a no-go.

I still wanted to check out something new, and Hebron Rock Colony (aka Hebron Falls, aka Boone Fork Falls, aka Rock Colony Falls, aka Can We Pick a Name For It Already?) was on my to-do list for the Grandfather Mountain area, albeit near the bottom. I had seen it listed on various websites and in Kevin Adams’ North Carolina Waterfalls book, but the swimming hole situation didn’t sound very promising. There were mentions of small swimming holes on several websites but no photographic evidence of people swimming, which is usually not a good sign if a place has heavy social media coverage. However, after I read up on the hike, I found out that Hebron Falls was along the five-mile Boone Fork Trail loop, and that the majority of social media conformists only do a 1.5 mile out-and-back hike to Hebron Falls. This meant there could be some hidden surprises along the remaining 3.5 miles of the loop. Additionally, there is no good Google Earth imagery for this area of Boone Fork (as of 2019), so the only way to assess the swimming hole situation was to get down there and check it out.

Mary said she would be down for a Boone-area hike but then remembered she had other commitments today, and my friend Ty from Asheville who did some swimming hole treks with me in 2017 is living in New England this summer. That meant I was on my own this time.

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

In summary, the Boone Fork Trail offered some nice cascades and a few relatively shallow pools for immersing oneself, but it’s probably not a hike I would recommend if your main objective is to go swimming. There was at least one pool that could pass with a C for a legit swimming hole, and two or three potential others I didn’t get into that may have also been legit (my idea of “legit” is deep enough to be over my head, and broad enough to swim ~10 feet in a given direction without kicking rocks or submerged clutter). Even if the unexplored pools were legit, I wouldn’t say any of them were exactly primo. Now, that’s not to say the hike wasn’t worthwhile. Boone Fork had that quintessential North Carolina Blue Ridge Mountain stream aesthetic (e.g., large boulders, flat and sloping rock shores, lined with blooming rhododendrons); it was basically a real-life stock photo of what comes to mind when I think of a Blue Ridge Parkway creek hike.

I didn't get much swimming hole action out of this hike, but I definitely left some stones unturned. If I could go back knowing what I know now, I would probably have gone counterclockwise and just turned back at the 2.5 mile marker, because all the interesting stuff is in the first half of the loop (going counterclockwise). I would like to have checked out more of the pools upstream of Hebron Falls (especially the slide one), and possibly the safe-ish looking one at the larger cascade that I came to earlier in the hike, downstream of Hebron Falls. I would also be interested to creek-walk a little ways down Boone Fork near the Bee Tree Creek confluence, as that section of the creek looked similar to Upper Creek just upstream of Upper Creek Falls, but I think Boone Fork may cross into private property around that area. That’s something I might undertake if I have another weekend where I just need something to do, but I wouldn’t prioritize it over most other swimming hole errands on my to-do list.