Start

This canyon has two entry paths. One is a hike up the Sam Merrill trail all the way up to Echo Mountain and then down a slope into the canyon. We chose the other option, which is a hike up from the bottom of the canyon. This hike starts gentle, but becomes an extremely steep climb. You end up climbing a 70 degree slope with switchbacks every 10 feet. And it goes up and up for at least 700 vertical feet. Just when you think you've taken the wrong trail, the trail starts heading down towards the canyon.

On the way, you get a spectacular view of a waterfall on the far wall dropping over 90 feet. This waterfall is not part of Rubio Canyon, but a tributary.

The way down to the canyon is steep and crumbly, and a little scary at times. After descending quite some ways, you finally drop into the canyon after climbing down some yucca infested rocks.

Rappels

You drop in at a large flat rock that serves very well for gearing up. This is followed by a small 5 foot downclimb into the water course. Within 20 feet you are treated to a nice short waterfall of about 20 feet that gets you a little wet. You must duck under a fallen tree and navigate its branches in the pool below.

After some canyon wading, we arrived at a two stage drop with pools in between. The upper pool is the so called "Diana's Bath". We found the bath to be only slightly above the knees. The pool below the second drop was a little deeper. We rappelled from the top through both drops.

Thalehaha Falls

After a bit more walking, we arrived suddenly at the big drop, Thalehaha Falls, which is around 80 to 90 feet. The canyon narrows to less than 10 feet here, and the drop is sudden and completely vertical. The water just seems to disappear off the edge. We approached the lip and looked down and found the floor barely visible through the white water flow. This rappel is pretty straight-forward, but the top is extremely slippery, and I ended up slipping near the top. We were very careful to ensure that both our main rope and the pull rope reached the bottom.

More Rappels

Immediately following the big drop we found two rappels 20 feet or less. One of them was basically just a pile of boulders that had become very slick, and I slipped here too. I think it is time to get some approach shoes with sticky rubber. The other had a small overhang at the bottom which forced you to go directly into the falls and get rather wet.

Final Rappels

After some minutes of canyon hiking where my feet got so cold I could barely feel my toes, we arrived at the last pair of falls. We discovered that some hikers had arrived at the base and were intently watching what we were doing. We stopped at the top here to have some lunch, as the sun was hitting the rock, and we needed some warming up.

The first of these rappels drops you into a small pool, which we just kept walking backwards until reaching the final drop. The rock here has an interesting ribbon pattern. This final drop is only about 20 feet, and puts you into a sand filled pool.

Exit

We pulled our rope, and began walking down the canyon. A few times the way got rough and we kept looking for the trail up the side wall. We were amazed that hikers would brave some of the obstacles, and yet they did. After some downclimbing and plenty of hiking, we came to the exit trail on the right. It led us back up to our original entry trail. After that, it was a simple and easy hike back to the cars.