Tamolitch Blue Pool
— — the river that disappears and comes back blue.
Not only on a wall.
“The McKenzie River vanishes into porous lava three miles upstream at Carmen Reservoir and resurfaces at Tamolitch — through the floor of the pool itself. The water comes up at thirty-seven degrees and reads as a flat, impossible blue. The cliff above is dry most of the year, but in heavy spring runoff the falls return for a few weeks. The trail keeps quiet about it.
Tamolitch Blue Pool, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Tamolitch Blue Pool sits on the upper McKenzie River in the Willamette National Forest, about sixty miles east of Eugene in Oregon's western Cascades. Reaching it means a 2.1-mile walk one way on the McKenzie River Trail from the Trail Bridge Reservoir trailhead. The pool is the lower end of a basalt gorge cut by Holocene-era lava flows from the Belknap Crater. Above the pool the riverbed runs dry, the McKenzie having gone underground three miles upstream at Carmen Reservoir.
The pool is fed almost entirely by springs that surface through the lava bedrock, which keeps the temperature near thirty-seven degrees Fahrenheit year-round. The intense blue is a combination of depth (around thirty feet), clarity, and the absence of suspended sediment — pure spring water scatters short wavelengths of sunlight the way clear ocean does. Tamolitch Falls itself is usually dry. During heavy spring runoff, water briefly tops the cliff and the falls return for a few weeks before the pool quiets again.
The trailhead is at the north end of Trail Bridge Reservoir, off Highway 126. The walk in is gentle, about 2.1 miles each way, with little elevation gain, on a well-built section of the McKenzie River National Recreation Trail. Swimming is technically permitted but strongly discouraged: the water is cold enough to cause shock, and rescues from the gorge are difficult. The Forest Service has recorded multiple fatalities here. The pool reads best in late morning, when the sun is full on it.