Fifth Water Hot Spring Utah

Fifth Water Hot Spring is about 650 miles from home for me but happened to be located reasonably close to our planned route to Yellowstone and near the Homestead Crater dive site we wanted offering the perfect opportunity to check it out.

It's one of those photogenic sites you see online whenever you look up hot springs and it's located close to Provo and is a short enough hike that it's known to be quite popular pretty much all seasons and days of the week.

After a long day of driving we arrived at 7 pm on a Tuesday night and found the parking lot packed and more people arriving by the minute so we elected to camp nearby and give it another try in the morning.


There were a number of nice campsites further west along Diamond Fork Rd I'd just recommend skipping the first few after the trailhead as they stank rather strongly of sulfur.


The next morning we were back at the trailhead (signed as Three Forks) at 6 am and found we practically had it to ourselves.


We passed two people coming out just as we started down the well established trail and then didn't see another soul until we reached the springs. The hike in is about 2.2 miles and there's a gradual thousand feet of gain to do but it goes pretty quick and easy. We found a number of very established looking campsites with fire pits along the way.


We also found the usual hot spring graffiti and endorsements of nude culture which is pretty much expected at this sort of place.


It took us about an hour to reach the hot spring and when we arrived at 7 am and found we had it to ourselves except for a naked Asian guy and his dog at the top pools. We nodded hello and briefly explored the area past the falls to see if there were any additional pools (we didn't find any) before heading back down to the lower pools for a bit of privacy.



The water was pleasant but not so hot that you have trouble staying in for any length of time and we spent about an hour kicking back before we had to get on the road to make our appointment to dive at Homestead Crater.

An older couple arrived a little after 8 am as we were getting ready to leave and that seemed to be the start of the flood. In the half an hour it took us to get back to the trailhead we passed at least 30 people including a few with large groups of small children.

Well worth the visit if you happen to be in the area though my advice would be to go as early in the morning as you can manage.