Blue Point Spring and Rogers Spring are two spring resurgences within the Lake Mead National Recreation area an hour north of Las Vegas.
These two spring resurgences release warm spring water that was measured to be at 81 degrees F.
The water comes from 10s of miles away from a large aquifier that might be connected to a system under ely, Nevada.
I went here to check for a potential dive into these springs using a No mount configuration and both springs appear to be inaccessible to diving into the springs due to restrictions.
One spring had some very brittle ceiling material that appears to flake off when touched.
Another spring had a slab rock restriction that did not allow for human travel into the spring.
These springs are both beautiful places to visit and I can see why people like swimming in these areas.
I highly recommend visiting these two places if you are looking for a nice swim in warm water.
Do not dunk your head underwater due to an amoeba that could potential cause major brain damage
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Matkatambia canyon is a remote non-technical canyon located within the vast reaches of the Grand Canyon.
Access is on the river with rafters making a stop right before the rapids of matkat or a technical
canyoneering trip down 150 mile canyon and a river crossing to gain a trail leading to matkat.
Our group went from the technical canyon of 150 mile canyon and made the river crossing over to
the trail leading to matkat.
The trail is pretty well defined once you are able to locate the trail itself.
Once you hike around to matkat you are greeted with some beautiful narrow canyon that drops into a incredible layer of muav limestone.
Spring water feeds the lower muav of Matkat and creates a beautiful layer of slides that are non technical and eat up hours of time with the fun you can have in the narrows.
Our ambitions were slowed by the amazing lower matkat narrows and ended up spending a day in matkat canyon.
Right from the river the hair combed walls of the muav have a distinctive appeal to them as the
weakness within the rock is horizontal in nature and looks like swirling linear patterns.
The slides start a few hundred up the canyon and people can literally slide down the canyon in sections to the river.
There even was a pink flamingo floating around!
After some hours here we hiked up matkat to see the beautiful temple butte formation and made a casual
and quite fast trek up to the confluence.
The hike up did not have any major obstructions until you get just before the confluence.
This is where you have to go left up canyon to get around the boulders.
A few of us made it to the confluence and headed back to lower matkat and eventually went back
to camp.
We had aspirations to go to olo and panameta canyons which turned out to not work out
We headed back down to get some afternoon lighting in the lower section of matkat and made our way back over to the hotel penthouse to prepare for our exit out of the canyon.
The following day we headed out of 150 mile canyon and made it back to the rim just as the sun was setting.
This is a fantastic canyon to visit and one of my all time favorite grand canyon canyons that I have had a chance to visit.
I am looking forward to next years trip where we will also combine this same trip with panameta and olo canyons.
This blog is for personal use only and is not to be used for beta
Rock canyon is a short but very scenic canyon located in a remote section of Zion national park.
The deep sand road creates a filter to keep most people out of canyon except for the groups willing to take on the deep sanded roads. The roads were indeed deep in sand. It reminded me of driving to white pocket.
We were in a jeep grand Cherokee with off road tires that were wider than traditional tires.
There were moments where we felt like we might be digging into the sand but mark was able to power through.
After an hour of this kind of driving, we made it to the trailhead of the canyon.
we found a trail and followed it down into the canyon with the first rap coming right into play.
We encountered 5 rappels up to 110 ft in length.
All of the rappel had their own character to them
and one of the drops, we were able to downclimb.
The main event was the 110 ft drop that took us into a beautiful alcove of glowing firey color within the sand stone.
after we got into this canyon, we hiked out and to the river. there was a beautiful stream flowing into the river. The hike out was straight forward and we all got back to the car in less than three hours.
After whispering falls, we had to strike camp and make it as far up kanab creek and into Scottys hollow before nightfall.
The Hike out Kanab Creek took a bit longer than I anticipated as we made a few stops here and there.
We also passed by Kanab 1 and 2 canyons which appeared to be interesting
tributaries into Kanab Creek
The towering walls were pretty typical of the grand canyon canyons that I have encountered but it was so nice to hike through Kanab Creek without any other people but ourselves.
The elevation started to decrease a bit as we meandered around more bends in Kanab to eventually reach the confluence of Scottys hollow and kanab creek.
We made it to this point at a time in the day where the decision was made to stay at the confluence of scotttys and kanab so we could have places to sleep and flowing water to drink.
5 dice was played and the last of the whiskey disappeared as nightfall came upon us.
Some clouds formed as we noticed the stars fading and coming back into the night as time progressed on.
We got a 0430 AM start so we could get to the rim at a decent hour.
We ended up leaving the campsite at 6 AM and started our way up Scottys hollow.
The water had an interesting amberish tint and it also appeared to get warmer and warmer along the way.
Continuing our hike up, we encountered a few swimmers with climbing that
included pack hoisting and climbing around awkward holds.
There were some interesting challenges climbing up and made the progress a bit slow going in sections.
The water got warmer and warmer and I realized that this is a warm spring flowing out of scottys hollow!
Once we climbed over the last water fall the canyon was bone dry and we made it to the north and south fork confluence.
Now we had more climbing over some interesting climbs that we had to negotiate until we got to the supai layer. At this point we had a few workarounds in the supai that brought us to the last pool of water.
This water had all kinds of life forms living in it but we were drinking our water supply away and brought some water up with us so we could have it if we needed it.
Once we got to the esplanade we had our final approach within site and it was a slog to get up the steep slope to the rim. It kept getting steeper and steeper and as we headed up we had to work around a sketchy trail ( very sketchy) and pick our way up to the top of the rim.
What an incredible trip this was. We had a shuttle car parked at the rim of scottys hollow. Going from Kanab point to kanab 0 down up and around to whispering falls, down the falls, up to scottys hollow in kanab, up scottys, and up to the rim of the grand canyon made this trip one epic grand canyoneering experience.