See photos of all of the waterfalls here.
See this updated article about the Fifth Water hot springs.
New update: The soaking pools have been rebuilt and are very nice. The area has become more family-friendly with most people wearing shorts/swimsuites.
Update 5-2-2011: I hiked to the Fifth Water waterfalls and hot pots to see them during a time of high water, and took some interesting photos.
The main, large hot pool below the lower waterfall has been washed out - it is totally gone. There are still other, smaller pools available but the large nice one is gone.
Location (hot springs and lower waterfall:
40.082499°, -111.317971°
Fifth Water is a tributary to Diamond Fork River, east of Spanish Fork. It offers a series of beautiful waterfalls and some very nice hot pot naturally warm mineral water pools. The waterfall featured here is the second when hiking in from the bottom, from the Three-Forks Trailhead. There are impressive waterfalls above and below this one, plus a couple cascades some writers have labeled waterfalls.
A word of caution: The hot pots here are very nice. Sadly, they attract a good number of people who enjoy soaking in the nude. The hot pots are located just below and above the lower waterfall - the falling water all but lands in one big pool. The trail winds past this area and continues up the canyon to the second waterfall. If you hike it be prepared to see totally nude people soaking in the water, relaxing on rocks and hiking the trail.
Reader Comments:
Like I told the Law Enforcement Officer and his family, up at Fifth Water Hot Springs, a few years ago, as he was complaining about people enjoying a nude soak,
If God had meant us to walk around naked, we would have been born that way!
Oh, we were.....
Funny thing, everyone in his family smiled at my comment, but he just kept on acting like he was the morality police.
What's so sad about that?
A warning is nice, but saying that it's sad, is a judgment. Kids love to run around naked, sadly.....
...do you see?
Have a great day! And don't let anyone see you naked!
Gotta love it! Kathy
----------------------
While your website generally is impressive and useful and your efforts to provide this information are appreciated, on the page describing Diamond Fork's Fifth Water hot springs, I find a characterization that is offensive:
"A word of caution: The hot pots here are very nice. Sadly, they attract a good number of people who enjoy soaking in the nude."
To warn people that they can encounter nudity at the hot springs is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. To editorialize with the word "sadly" shows an offensive bias in attitude that doesn't belong there.
The long-standing tradition of nude use that Fifth Water--along with many dozens and dozens of other hot springs throughout the country--may be a "sad" thing to prudish people who can't bear the reminder that human bodies actually exist and feel it their right to impose that attitude on others who feel differently, but to a great many people there's nothing sad about it at all. On the contrary, to them it's a delight that there are at least a few places in "Red Rock" country where people can commune with nature in their natural state--an experience that many consider a downright spiritual experience--and what's really sad is that prudish people want to take even those few places away from them.
That word "sadly" is an offensive characterization which communicates that your personal biases are superior to everyone else's when it comes to human bodies, and that, sir, is inexcusable in a context where you are trying to serve the community at large with information about wilderness recreation. More members of that community than you might think find nothing sad about opportunities to recreate innocently nude.
If you were to simply remove the word "sadly" from your "word of warning" (and perhaps change the word "warning" to "caution"), there would be nothing offensive in your page about Fifth Water, and it would serve the ENTIRE community of people who like to recreate in the wilderness without offending a portion of them.
I looked back at the article and realized I'd made one mistake. The word "caution" is already there instead of "warning." Caution is a reasonable word to use.
- D. Michael
