Adventures of a swimming hole aficionado

For the fifth and final day of this year’s California swimming hole marathon, Cade and I returned to Royal Gorge for the first time in four years. The gorge has five major waterfalls and many swimming holes, most with a variety of jumping opportunities, but the miles of sketchy dirt road driving to get there and the long hike down into the gorge make it impossible to see much of it in a day trip. On our previous visit in 2017, we had only been able to see waterfall #2, which is located about where the trail crosses the river. Waterfall #1 is upstream of the trail, and 3-5 are downstream. The third one appears to have the best swimming hole, from what I’ve seen on social media. The second waterfall is a spectacular spot in its own right, but I wanted the full gorge experience. My original plan for this summer was to learn backpacking back home in North Carolina during June and July and then apply my knowledge to Royal Gorge at the end of the summer. However, since we had to do our trip way earlier this year to stay ahead of the drought and inevitable wildfire season, I came in unprepared to camp. I hadn’t planned on returning to the gorge if we weren’t going to overnight it, but Cade wanted to go again regardless, so I put it on the itinerary. However, after the brutal hike to and from "The Green Bridge" two days ago, Cade wasn’t sure he was up for the gorge anymore. We had originally planned the gorge for yesterday and Emerald Pools for today, but Cade’s legs were too destroyed for a long hike, so we swapped days and did Emerald Pools yesterday. Cade still wasn’t sure about the gorge since he was still hurting and wasn’t sure the water would be warm enough to be enjoyable. Last time, the water temperature had ranged from 56-60 °F in different pools, which was too cold for a swim to be pleasant. I insisted we do it though, because we had kind of already committed to it schedule-wise, so blowing it off would mean resorting to lame backup plans for the final day of our trip. Plus, since the water was so warm downstream at “Green Bridge” and Yankee Jim’s, I was curious to see if it would be warmer this year in the gorge as well, because Royal Gorge with comfortable water temperatures would be pretty much the best thing ever.

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

In summary, it was nice to revisit one of our all-time favorite California swimming holes. Last time, I had said that it would be the perfect swimming hole destination if only the water temperature were more comfortable, and today it was. Unfortunately, today’s visit was pretty brief. I would almost say the amount of time we spent at the actual swimming holes wasn’t worth the time and effort spent getting there and back, but it was good to see that the river has the potential to be warmer in this location than what we experienced in 2017. Since we visited three places on the North Fork American River this year, we also have a basis for comparison to predict the water temperature in Royal Gorge based on other, more easily accessible locations along the river. Although our favorite California river has been the South Yuba up to this point, the North Fork American has proven to be the nicer of the two rivers during extreme drought conditions. It stayed clean and clear this year while the places we went to on the South Yuba were brown and dirty. One decision we’ve made from today’s trip is no more doing Royal Gorge as a day trip, unless we get started super early and have a Jeep or some other robust off-road vehicle. The amount of rough dirt road driving and subsequent hiking is just too much for the amount of time we actually get to spend enjoying the swimming holes. I’ve never had any desire to backpack or primitive camp before I found this place, but now I feel like I really need to learn to backpack so I can see the other four major waterfalls (and numerous other swimming holes) the gorge has to offer. We might need to network with some people who have suitable vehicles for these roads, though. Anyone with a jeep want to be our friend?
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( Click here to see my ranking for the swimming holes we visited on this trip )

This year’s trip was a little stressful since we had to work around a number of last-minute obstacles to make it happen, and the conditions were pretty extreme this year. We were dealing with 100-degree heat on some days, which is hot even for northern California. It didn’t help that we got sunburned on day one, either. The drought narrowed down our options for this year and made the South Yuba River dirty and less appealing, but it did have the silver lining of warming the waters to bearable temperatures in some of the places that are normally too cold to be enjoyable. It was also a little disappointing that we didn’t go anywhere grandiose this year (that we hadn’t been to already), so I’m hoping we’ll finally get to explore more of the Yosemite area next time. It feels kind of weird to have a California trip in the rearview mirror and be less than halfway through July, so I’ll have to see if I can make do with North Carolina for the rest of the summer.

Today, my friend Cade and I kicked off our fourth annual California swimming hole marathon with an excursion to Yankee Jim’s Bridge on the North Fork American River, and we also checked out Shirttail Creek Falls on a side stream about a mile upstream from the bridge.

Lining up this year’s trip proved to be challenging because Murphy’s Law was attacking from all angles. We normally hit up California swimming holes in late July or August because many of the rivers are fed by snowmelt, and they don’t become (relatively) warm and hospitable until later in the summer. However, California had record low snowfall this past winter, and everything is drying up at a greatly accelerated rate due to the drought. I checked the water levels for the rivers we had visited in the past, and the levels this June were already below where they usually are in late summer. I kept seeing on the national news that lakes were so low that the water levels had dropped below the ends of the boat ramps. I knew we needed to get a move-on if we wanted to stay ahead of the drought (and the inevitable accompanying wildfires), so we scheduled a seven-day trip from July 5-11. However, I got hit with a job interview request for that week, and they were unable to be flexible with the dates. Cade already had some work projects on the back end of those dates and was only able to push the dates back by a day, so we ended up having to shave two days off the trip. I had originally planned to take us to Yosemite for the first couple of days, and then move up to gold country (i.e., the area of the Sierras just north and east of Sacramento) to spend more time exploring the South Yuba and North Fork American Rivers. However, after cutting the trip down to five days, we decided to blow off Yosemite yet again and spend the entire time in gold country. If these setbacks weren’t enough, we then found out that the area would be under an excessive heat warning with temperatures in the 100’s (not including the heat index) for pretty much the entire duration of our trip. That was going to make the excursions with long hikes potentially dangerous, but we thought that this in conjunction with the drought might have the silver lining of making some of the colder swimming holes (e.g., Emerald Pools, Royal Gorge) a little warmer this time.

Yankee Jim’s didn’t strike me as a standout swimming hole, but I wanted to go there for two reasons. First and foremost, it was featured on a Rescue 911 episode (aptly titled “American River”, which you can watch here), and I heard they were possibly going to tear down the bridge soon to put in a new one, so I wanted to see it while it was still there. Second, we hadn’t checked out any spots on the North Fork American River other than Royal Gorge (which was awesome, but the water was way too cold), so checking out more swimming holes on the North Fork American was my main objective for this trip. I had come up with a few potential spots to check out, but most of them require a fair amount of effort to get to, so I figured Yankee Jim’s might be a good starting point since it’s right off the road. It would also give us a chance to test the water temperature to see if arduous hikes to more remote spots further upstream would be worth it in the coming days. Yankee Jim’s had apparently become Instagram-famous and blown up with tourists last year during covid, causing a 300-car traffic jam on the small one-lane dirt road that leads to it, so I made it a point to schedule this excursion for a weekday.

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

In summary, Yankee Jim’s was nothing spectacular (for California), but it was a decent swimming hole with some jumps and a comfortable water temperature (with the caveat that this is an unusually low flow year). I can now say I’ve crossed it off my Rescue 911 bucket list. I’m not sure why it has gotten so blown up with tourists, though. I doubt many of them are viewers of Rescue 911. Probably from influencers on Instagram going down there and taking selfies, but it seems like a pretty ordinary California swimming hole, so I’m not sure why this particular spot is Instagram famous. Maybe just because it’s so close to the road? Shirttail Creek Falls was okay. It's not something I would make a special trip for on its own merit, but it makes a nice bonus if you’re already doing an excursion in the area.