Adventures of a swimming hole aficionado

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.