This canyon was the highest on my hit list for this trip. Grotto Pool is famous for its short but spectacular sculpted granite narrows with naturally painted water streaks and deep green pools Although the canyon itself is relatively short, a long approach and equally long return totaling to over 16 miles of travel mean that this canyon is typically done as a two-day trip (~16-20 hours of travel). Despite the difficulty, the variety of terrain is interesting and the trip is a true Arizona classic. Not only was our plan to complete the trip in a single day, but to complete it in late fall when the days are already rather short. Although I was confident we could do it, that did not stop us from preparing to take a stove, hot dinner and some warm clothes- there would be no avoiding a long day. We packed well, bringing just what we needed (including the bare minimum of rope and webbing) and not much more.
While Andy and Dan preferred to have a leisurely day canyoning in the Jug (I don't blame them), Jeff and I got up at the crisp hour of 0500 to pack up and drive to the Reynolds trailhead. Just as I started to get warm from the heat of the car, we arrived and piled back out into the cold. We set off hiking at the first light of dawn, making good time along the trail through the pines towards Park Tank. From Park Tank we veered off on another trail and then followed the dry creekbed of Park Creek to the first signs of canyon. The creek then hit a few quartzite/conglomerate layers and dropped in a series of dry waterfalls requiring downclimbing and rappelling. We traversed a few nice blocky basaltic narrows (remarkably keeping our feet dry). As we continued to drop in elevation we saw our first sign of pink granite- we were finally getting to the good stuff. A bit further on we saw our first wall-to-wall pool and decided to snack and suit up.
In very little time, the pink granite led us to the spectacular finale of Park Canyon- here a 60ft rappel took us down a perfectly smooth chute and over a clean lip to descend into a perfect bowl-shaped pool with an impressive arch at its exit. Although I didn't dare, I did have a good look and I am convinced this must be the mother of all slides in Arizona. A steep 25-foot long chute into a clean 20-foot high drop into a deep boulder-free pool. It was tempting but this is not where I wanted to hurt myself! Just after the arch pool the canyon sort of abruptly dissipates at a cliff face which we rappelled to reach the floor of Salome Creek, home of Grotto Pool Canyon. I guess for some reason I expected the pool to be the grand finale near the end of the canyon so I was pleasantly surprised to find that most of the canyon was still ahead of us.
Here we had our first long stint of boulder scrambling and pool wading down the following creek. After perhaps 45 minutes (enough!) of this, we saw a gateway of pink granite bedrock looming ahead and got excited for the main event. Jumps, slides, more jumps- now it was on! All two quickly we reached the Grotto Pool itself (frontispiece). Despite harsh lighting, the pool was impressive. It was probably the biggest pool I have seen in a canyon and best I could tell it was bottomless for much of its length.
The canyon continued to present some fantastic features. Fifteen-foot jumps, long swims, a few downclimbs, a couple slides and one rappel. The pools were deep and clear, giving us a lot of confidence on the jumps. We swam under an enormous canyon-spanning chockstone, skirted around a couple pools and then came to a neat rappel off of a chockstone pinch. Most of the way down the abseil there was a neat little cave with some calcite deposits. We then jumped into yet another beautiful pool. A couple more jumps, swims and slides and we could see Workman Creek coming in on the left, signalling the end of the canyon, but not the end of the adventure.
Thankfully we did not find Workman Creek to be as horrible as the guidebook suggested. Yes the rocks were kind of slippery, yes there were some tricky climbs we had to do to bypass waterfalls and yes the swims were cold, but the canyon itself was beautiful. Fresh flowing water and the changing colors of the trees (which coated pools of unknown depths with vision-obscuring leaves) made for challenging but enjoyable travel. I was happy to note a general lack of poison ivy. That said it did seem to be taking us a long time to go a short distance according to our interpretation of the map. Eventually we were eager to figure out exactly where we were and I pulled the GPS out of the drybags. Turns out we had overshot our (supposedly obvious) exit trail by about 0.7 miles. Ouch! Not willing to accept the lost time from retracing our steps and then finding the start of the 6 mile trail just before dark, I realized we were actually closer to the confluence of Reynolds and Workman creeks (about 0.5 miles). Although I had no idea what we would find in the next 0.5 miles (labeled Devils Hole on the map!), I had been down Reynolds before and up the short canyon of Workman above the confluence so had a pretty good idea of what to expect. Once through that it would only be 2 trail miles back to the car! What started as a crucial mistake, we managed to salvage by carrying on, enjoying more challenges in Workman Creek including a sketchy, exposed waterfall climb Jeff led to save us time on bypassing it. Although the travel was far more interesting and scenic than the trail, we were burning lots of energy, losing daylight, and our wetsuits were getting really uncomfortable. Just in time (about 4pm) we reached the trail junction with Workman Creek. We immediately started up the JetBoil on dinner as we stripped off the neoprene and put on the warmest clothes we had. It would be getting cold soon so we needed to efficiently eat dinner and get moving. Two easy trail miles and we were back at the car. Despite our extended adventure up Workman Creek, we still completed the trip in 12 hours which I thought was a great effort!
Although Grotto Pool Canyon itself was shorter than I hoped (and overall I would say that the Jug makes a much better trip), the features in there are spectacular with Grotto Pool being just one of them. In any case my curiosity has been satisfied. Neat place. Thanks to Jeff- awesome trip!
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