Hello Paul, Three times in and out of that canyon is more than enough exercise for one day, especially carrying a load of trash each time. Its good that there are people that take the time to do this otherwise the trash situation would get real ugly down there! I've imagined many times that a fitting punishment for these people who leave trash would be to clean up around the springs and carry trash out for a week or so. Oh well, like Rick said, theres not much to be done about that. These days I take out what I can manage up the trail without turning my hike into a real ordeal and leave the rest I've picked up in a large black bag along the trail where I hope someone else will see it and take it out. Last Saturday I spent most of the time around the Arizona pool. There's alot of room for the kids to run around and its a nice place to get into the creek where the Arizona pool meets the creek. There are several ledges under water that you can sit or stand on just underwater and these ledges are basically clean of the mud. if you swim about 20 feet out into the creek just downstream thier is a sand bar that is quite clean on the bottom. This sandbar begins to get muddy again the further you go downstream. Its nice to have a spot to stand in the creek which has the nice sandy bottom like before the mud. There is a nice little alder tree that grows right next to the Arizona pool which is pleasant to sit under when its hot out. I cleaned off alot of the rocks around the Arizona pool and placed some big boulders in the mud right next to it which gives good footing when accessing the pool from the trails or the creek. I cleaned off quite a bit of mud next to the pool which was covering the rock and cement work of the pool. When the creek lowers down further a hose can be used as a vacum over the side of the pool to clean it out better. It still has a little bit of a layer of mud on the bottom. Sorry that I missed DCR again. Something must have changed thier plans. Everyones busy and has differant schedules so alot of times its hard to plan a specific day. I many times just head up when I get a break in my work or it works out for me on the weekend. Heck, pretty much any excuse will do :-) Storms coming, storms leaving, its sunny, its snowing, its flooding, thunderstorms, another hotsprings friend wants to go, the kids say " Papa, lets go to the Hiking ", my dogs give me that sad look thinking " take us to the hotsprings ", well I could go on and on but you get the idea :-) Happy Soakin!
