By Preston Lazer
Your HOA probably has a swimming pool, but you’re reading this because you want an adventure, right? It’s hot, it’s still summer and you want to get out of town. That’s what I had in mind when I set out this weekend to visit the pools on Overall Run, just a bit over an hour from Bristow.
Overall Run in Shenandoah National Park is probably best known for its 93-foot waterfall which is a spectacular destination in the spring and fall or whenever there has been recent heavy rain. However, in the summer, the waterfall and much of the stream can dry to a trickle, and that’s when I’m more interested in a less-known feature of Overall Run: the swimmin’ holes!
I first discovered these three tightly-grouped swimming holes and the short, slick, rock slide that enters the uppermost pool a couple of years ago when I was doing some training for an extended backpacking trek in the West. I had hiked five steep miles down to the bottom of the mountain from the Mathews Arm Campground, which is along the Skyline Drive at the top, only to hear shouts and running water. Poking beyond the trees, I found a family with kids playing in a Shangri-La-like setting.
Right away I knew I had stumbled onto a special place. It seemed odd that I had never heard of this exceptional location since I thought myself to be a sort of walking encyclopedia on the park, but Shenandoah has many secrets that it gives up slowly. In fact, the Park Service does not advertise specific swimming locations as it does with its waterfall viewing areas, trails, and vistas; my personal assumption is that this is meant to reduce cases of drowning and serious falls of careless visitors which far outnumber more sensational ways to get harmed in a national park. Nevertheless, I confirmed that swimming at one’s own risk is a sanctioned activity within the park at the time of this writing.
For GPS and Google map users, the approximate location is 38.7895, -78.3218. One can access the upper pool under the right water levels by sliding feet-first (Don’t ever dive!) off a large slab of slick rock that forms a sort of slide. The pool just downstream from it requires some deft scrambling along the side of what is about a 12-foot waterfall when stream levels are high enough. This middle pool seems to be quite deep, and the slippery incline can make exiting tricky. The final pool at the bottom is somewhat shallower than the first two and might be better for shallow wading, although the rock-scrambling needed to access it (and the middle pool) from above would speak against ushering small children there.
When I went last weekend, there was a mix of families, teenagers and college-age kids sharing the area. The families with smaller children tended to focus on the more easily accessible upper pool, though one family apparently bush-whacked off-trail from far downstream in order to reach the bottom pool and its shallower waters. The more intrepid explorers seemed to enjoy clambering over the rocks to reach the picturesque middle pool with its depth and its location at the foot of a waterfall. There seemed to be enough water to manage all of the traffic, which I expect is probably lighter on weekdays. In any event, these are easily the most reliable deep pools I have ever found in the park. The locals I met confirmed that these pools hold water even in the driest months. They also confirmed that I had chosen the most difficult possible route to get to them.
The easiest way to the pools is via a 1-mile hike over modest terrain from a National Park Service parking area near the end of Va. Route 630 (Thompson Hollow Road). This is just before it enters private land on all sides just prior to actually entering the Shenandoah National Park. If you use this method of access, do your part to keep the peace with private owners along the entrance road: Park only in the sanctioned area designated by the brown National Park Service sign where you won’t block traffic, walk only on the road as you walk toward the public land and don’t leave trash. For this approach, I advise using the directions posted by the folks at SwimmingHoles.info, at > Overall Area > Overall Run. (See the directions for the three pools at OVEA in blue or “Overall Area,” NOT Gooney Creek. I used these directions in July 2013 and found them to be very accurate.)
Preston Lazer is a teacher-librarian by day, a diaper changer by night and a hiking-fishing-backpacking nut all day. This article is part of a series on outdoor opportunities within a reasonable drive of Bristow.
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