Greenland Lake

Greenland Lake sits just off Cape Royal Road on the Walhalla Plateau, about a mile east of Greenland Spring on the North Rim. It's a sinkhole lake: mildly acidic snowmelt and rain seeped into cracks in the Kaibab limestone over time, dissolving the rock until the ground above collapsed, and silt sealed the bottom enough to hold water. At roughly 5 acres and 10 feet deep on average, it's small, and it's intermittent — in low-snowpack years there may be little more than a muddy basin instead of open water.

What you'll see

A quiet pond ringed by aspen, with ponderosa pine and Douglas fir behind them, at about 8,400 feet elevation. It's an easy pull-off from the road rather than a hike, and it's a reliable place to spot deer coming down to drink. An old cabin site nearby was once used to store salt for grazing cattle. Cape Royal Road and the surrounding area reopened to visitors after 2025 fire-season closures, so this stop is back in play on the drive out to Cape Royal and Vista Encantada.