Arnold Valley Pool is a hidden, spring-fed swimming hole tucked into the mountains near Natural Bridge Station, Virginia, in the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests below the Blue Ridge Parkway. It is a local favorite for good reason: massive boulders wall the clear pool on three sides, a natural rock slide feeds swimmers into the deepest part, nearly twelve feet down, and a twenty-foot rope swing hangs over water deep enough to jump into safely. Being spring-fed, the water stays bracingly cold even at the height of a Virginia summer, which is exactly the appeal on a hot day.

Reaching it is part of the fun. The approach starts on the Blue Ridge Parkway at about Milepost 71, where an unmarked gravel road drops off the mountain and winds down into Arnold Valley for a few miles; the swimming hole sits just a couple hundred feet off the road, so once you find the pull-off there is barely any walking. It shares its access road with Devil's Marbleyard, the enormous quartzite boulder field reached by a roughly one-and-a-half-mile climb on the Belfast Trail, so many people pair a morning scramble on the rocks with an afternoon cooling off in the pool.

Facilities are minimal, this is a natural forest swimming hole rather than a developed beach, but the Cave Mountain Lake Recreation Area campground nearby, with dozens of forest campsites and its own small swimming lake, makes an easy basecamp for a weekend of swimming and hiking, and the upper James River runs through the valley below for paddling and fishing. The best season runs from late spring through early fall, roughly May through October, when the air is warm enough to make the cold plunge worth it.

Come prepared for the shock of the water, mind the rocks around the slide and rope swing, and always wade in to check depth before you jump, since levels shift with the season and rainfall. For boulders, a rope swing and a natural slide in cold mountain water, Arnold Valley is one of the best swimming holes in the Lexington and Natural Bridge area.