Discover Deceivingly Caribbean-Colored Waters At This Underrated Oregon River

Lava fields, old growth forests, cascading waterfalls, springs so blue they make your eyes ache ... the McKenzie River National Recreation Trail packs so much scenery into so few miles that it feels too good to be true. It's like an amusement park ride designed to mimic nature, rather than what it is: one of the most scenic stretches of river anywhere in the world. The McKenzie is on every mountain biker's bucket list, but it's just as wonderful on foot. Every inch of this trail is glorious, but the star attraction, the feature that brings adventurous, in-the-know water worshipers out every summer, is the Tamolitch Falls, more commonly called simply the Blue Pool. These waters are so intensely blue, amid forests so green, you could be forgiven for thinking you're on a waterfall hike in the Caribbean instead of in the Pacific Northwest.

Downstream of its pair of cascading falls, the McKenzie River was buried generations ago by a lava flow, so that today it travels completely underground for a 3-mile stretch. As it descends, the porous lava filters and chills the water so that by the time it wells up again at Tamolitch Falls, it is ruthlessly cold and impossibly clear. You can take a short, scenic 2-mile hike to the pool that starts at the Tamolitch Trailhead, but if you're up for it, you owe it to yourself to get there the hard way (from the Carmen Reservoir), working up a sweat so you can really relish your cold plunge.

The McKenzie River Trail is just over 25 miles long, perfect for mountain bikers to bomb down in a day, but not day hike-able for most of us. Luckily, the major highlights lie within a particularly scenic 7-mile stretch that runs from just below Clear Lake to the Blue Pool trailhead. The nearby Horse Creek Lodge offers a "Best of the McKenzie" hiker shuttle, letting you leave your car at the end and hike this spectacular section of trail one-way, downhill.

You'll pass thundering Sahalie and Koosah Falls and then reach pretty little Carmen Reservoir, with the trail lined with Oregon grape and huckleberries. In just a few breezy downhill miles, you'll be looking down a cliff at the Blue Pool. The steep route to its shore can be a tricky scramble, but persevere to discover the genius reason for working up a sweat to get here: to join the other hikers in stripping down to wade — or cannonball — into the bracing, 37-degrees Fahrenheit spring pool. Hop right back out immediately, lest your toes end up as blue as the water.

Moving on, you'll be past the big water features, but the last 2 miles of the trail are the prettiest — lined with mossy rocks or carved into the lava beds, a mix of aspen, maple, and old-growth fir branches heavy with moss will glow in the dappled sunlight. Just 2 miles of intimate leafy grottos and picturesque log footbridges, and you're done before you know it.

The McKenzie River Trail actually begins just a few miles further upstream, above Clear Lake, another cold, blue body of water. If you have two days, make the Clear Lake Trail that loops around this lake, through forest and dramatic lava fields, your day two. Or for a longer excursion, combine the Clear Lake Loop and the McKenzie Trail into a three-day backpacking trip. At just under three hours from Portland, a visit to the McKenzie can be done as a long day trip, but with many picturesque campgrounds and lodges, you'll want to sleep over, especially after a hot spring visit.

In a neat trick of geology, cold springs like Tamolitch and Idaho's Blue Heart Springs, are inclined to be near hot springs. So whether you hike, bike, raft, or even just road trip to the scenic vistas, a soak in the mineral-rich waters of Belknap Hot Springs makes for a fitting finale to your day. For $10, you can soak for an hour in a man-made riverside outdoor pool, fed by a scalding natural spring and cooled down to a float-friendly 100 degrees Fahrenheit with river water — just tuck a pool noodle behind your head, lie back, and bliss out.