A watery grave?

 

    Despite the inherent danger of cliff jumping,  no one died the day we visited Moulton Falls up in Washington. Initially we were drawn to the area from reports of 84 degree water temperatures. That, it turned out, was a lie. The water was probably closer to 65 or 70 degrees. In all actuality, on a 100 degree day, it felt really nice. And it was warmer than some of our other would be swim spots where the water is closer to 40 degrees. The standout difference between this and other places we have swum at, had to be the people flinging themselves off of the tallest rocky structures they could find. The topography of this place was somewhat unique, tall rock walls looming over a narrow but deceptively deep green river? stream? creek? Nor really sure what you would call this thing other than super neat. We had a large group of swimmers with us this time, Casey, myself, Sara, Sandra, Shaun, Casey's brother Jake, and his new boyfriend Chris. And the dog. We brought the grill and beverages, camera, an inner-tube, fun noodles, and sunblock. All ingredients in a recipe of fun. We didn't anticipate the challenges that lie before we could even reach the water though. See the bridge above? Parking was up on that level of ground. You are probably thinking stairs to get down right? No. Of course not! All our people and gear had to be carried, passed, carefully navigated, and slid down steep dirt/rock/grass embankments, then hiked even further over and down huge rocks and boulders to get down to the water. Talk about working for your fun. It was worth it though, this place was like a natural waterpark. Upstream there were large rock formations that formed a bunch of private pools. A little further down there was a section of rapids (tiny and waterfall-ish) that we made use of by riding over it in the inner-tube. And if you let the current take you further down you would reach the cliff jumping area. There were various heights from which to choose from: "sissy" *The only one I attempted* to "you must be out of your mind." There was also one I'd call "dead man falling" in the form of a sister (same height) bridge behind where I was taking the above photo. One idiot, i mean, boy jumped off while we were there. Another interesting feature that some of the kids were trying out was this deep hole in the rock at the side of the river that formed a tube straight down into the water. We were told about 10 feet down there was an opening that lead out into the river. We watched for quite some time while some of the more experienced teenagers were teaching another exactly how to "pencil jump" into this narrow, 3' wide pitch black hole. "Just look for the light," they kept saying. He tried several times and gave up. It was pretty freaky to watch them jump into this abyss and emerge halfway out into the stream. A few of the people who tagged along for this swim were quite the adventitious souls, repeatedly jumping off the highest cliff. Not me, I was content to sit back and collect video and photographic evidence of their stupidity.. I mean, bravery LOL.

Here's the video, Make sure you maximize it for full effect after setting the quality to its highest (look on previous posts for instructions), Maximize is the rightmost button on the bottom of the movie window. CLICK HERE