Visiting Sitting Bull Falls Near Carlsbad, NM

On our way to Carlsbad Caverns National Park, we saw a sign for Sitting Bull Falls. I kept it in the back of my mind as something we could do during our time there, but we then had the front desk staff at our hotel recommend paying it a visit, so we decided to do just that.

It takes about an hour to drive from Carlsbad to Sitting Bull Falls Recreation Area. It seemed like it’d be a great place to camp as it was in a beautiful canyon setting, had toilets, picnic shelters and drinking water, but the area is for day use only. I’d initially thought that camping was allowed as there was an RV set up there, but I think that might’ve been where a park ranger was living.

Sitting Bull Falls Recreation Area is in Lincoln National Forest. They charge a $5 fee per vehicle, or $10 for vehicles carrying more than ten passengers.

There are several trails in the area and there are free trail maps available on site so you can easily check out your options and know where you’re going.

We’d gotten a late start that day and so didn’t arrive until about 3:30pm. We therefore didn’t have time to do any hiking and so gave the other trails a miss, including the one taking you to the top of the falls seeing as that particular trail closed at 4pm.

As a result we just took the short paved trail to the lower falls. One of the nice aspects of Sitting Bull Falls is that dogs are allowed provided they’re on a leash, so Truffles got to join us.

The paved trail is very short and so it only took about a minute to reach the viewing platform.

Another great feature of the falls is that you’re allowed to explore the area. There weren’t any signs saying you had to stay on the viewing platform and in fact it’s been built specifically to allow visitors to access the falls and pool area as there are steps leading down.

Shae and I hadn’t had lunch yet, so we wandered around to find a good spot to sit and have something to eat. While exploring we heard rushing water, so we decided to have lunch there. The red circle in the photo below is the general area we went.

After having our lunch, we explored a little more to see the source of the water we were hearing which wasn’t from the main part of Sitting Bull Falls that you could see from the viewing area.

We headed up between the rock wall and some boulders…

…where we discovered another set of falls that most other people had seemed to miss.

By the time we’d explored this area all other visitors to the falls had left, so we had the place to ourselves.

Unlike some waterfalls, the source of Sitting Bull Falls’ water isn’t from a river. Instead, the water comes from a spring at the top of the falls. Apparently you can see the spring if you take trail 86A to the top of the falls (the one we didn’t have time for unfortunately).

Another great feature of Sitting Bull Falls is that visitors are allowed to wade and swim in the water. I imagine the falls therefore get incredibly busy in the summer as it’s a beautiful place to visit and swim.

Shae, Truffles and I visited at the end of March, so the water was still too chilly to wade in for too long and certainly too cold to swim in at that time of year. After a hike in the area though, it would be the perfect place to cool off.

Here’s a panoramic video I took of the area during our visit, although watching it back I don’t feel like it really does justice to how pretty it was there.

The recreation area closes at 5pm, so after taking a couple of family photos we headed back to our car.