The LEDGE - Hidden Swimming Holes of Yosemite

At the top there's a lot of slippery rocks. It looks like there might be a ledge that we can kind of shimmy across, but I don't know how big the gap is across the top of the falls. We are in Yosemite National Park today to explore some hidden swimming holes. It's near the Wawona Campground area and we're going to hike up the creek. They're actually not too far up the creek. We're looking for a spot known to locals as the ledge. It was in the mid-30s last night up here in the Sierra Nevada mountain range and it is pretty chilly this morning. Not really looking forward to some icy cold swimming holes, but hopefully a little bit of a hike get that sweat going, get us ready to jump in that awesome icy cold fresh pristine mountain water. So far it's a little tougher than yesterday. A lot of boulder hopping, rock scrambling. We're going way up to the top of this to get to the ledge. They said there's some exposed class 3 climbing, so it looks pretty daunting from this angle right now. There's a couple little grottos and pools down here. It's beautiful. The flow isn't that great right now, middle of September, so hopefully the pool is deep enough to enjoy and possibly do some jumps off of. Right now I'm just soaking in the ambiance being down here in this beautiful canyon, this creek bed. Man, this canyon is so beautiful. We haven't even gotten to any of the swimming holes yet. Hit this little beautiful falls here, and I think the plan is to shimmy up the right side there. There's supposed to be some granite steps that take you up to the swimming hole they call the ledge, but I'm loving the boulder hopping and rock scrambling. Some of the granite is a little weathered and worn, so it's a little more grippy than, you know, like that really smooth granite that we're used to, but then again my shoes haven't gotten wet yet, so when that happens I'll probably be looking for an alternative way back down for sure. Well, we kind of hit a snag here. We bushwhacked up the right side of the creek and did some boulder hopping, and there's good news and there's bad news. The good news is we found this beautiful slot, like a vertical slot canyon here that is probably a raging beautiful waterfall in the springtime. The bad news is I tried climbing up this, and as you can see it's very mossy, some loose rocks at the top, and it's very steep, so free climbing that is not an option. We came from over here, which is really slippery with all these leaves and stuff like that, so at this point our only options are to go back down the creek through this boulder field, which there's some steep drops going that way, or to try and traverse that little waterfall that we saw, but we got to scope that out because it's really slippery at the top. There's a lot of slippery rocks. It looks like there might be a ledge that we can kind of shimmy across, but I don't know how big the gap is across the top of the falls, and if it's too big it's going to be way too dangerous because a big slippery gap over a 50-foot drop is not how I want to end my story today. So we're going to scope that out. Worst case scenario we're just going to have to carefully drop down some of these boulders back down the creek and figure out another plan. So we made it across that waterfall, came across here, across that waterfall, and look at that, another waterfall over here. Supposedly there's a point where if we keep going up we, instead of going left on the trail, we turn right and then there's more climbing. I don't think the climbing we're going to encounter is going to be any more difficult than what we've already done today so far, This pool right here, that's a solid backup right there if we don't find what we're looking for. But we found another awesome waterfall. It looks like a pretty deep pool here. I think we're almost to the spot we're looking for which is that way, but again even if we don't make it there, plenty of other options for swimming holes. Made it to the spot they call the ledge, and you can see why they call it the ledge. These beautiful straight granite ledges running across the length of it. The pool isn't that deep, definitely for like that little 10-foot jump, it should be deep enough for that, but beautiful giant swimming hole. This time of year there's not too many people here, probably because the water's so cold, and the pool is pretty low so you're not going to be hitting any crazy jumps. We may try to go a little higher. There's a couple other pools up top so I'm going to chill out here for a while, maybe take a dip and maybe explore some more. He had a bright red tongue. Oh he's going down the falls, that was awesome. Infamous.