
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.