I could imagine a better swimming hole in New Hampshire; I just couldn’t find one. This spot in the White Mountain National Forest is broad and deep. A ring of rock rises out of the river, making an impound that’s about 25 feet wide and 60 feet from the boulders at the bottom to the columns forming the top of the hole.

You wouldn’t call the columns twins, but they’re very similar in angle, dimension, effect and purpose. Both are nearly vertical and about eight feet tall. They stand seven feet apart, the distal end of a bedrock formation that pinches the river together, accelerating it and producing the erosive force that keeps the pool below clear.

Mike Quinn says that he spent the entire summer of '75 driving down from Berlin in his '68 Chrysler Newport.  "It was the era of cut-off shorts, and after swimming, I would place my wet shorts on the car's radio antenna to dry. They'd be flapping and snapping in the wind so much that I had to begin the season with my shorts cut long because by August, the wind would have torn the fraying cloth strands from the bottom."

Copyright Running Water Publications 2002