Olympic Hot Springs
The camping crew hit the road again for a dayhike on the Olympic Peninsula, this time with a trip to the Olympic Hot Springs. Coming out for this trip was a smaller group than we normally have: James, Jason, Mike and myself. Ordinarily this kind of thing has double that number, but the smaller size meant more space per person in the hot spring itself, so I was all for it.
James planned the trip to be an all day affair: we were meeting for coffee at the Starbuck’s on Olive at 8:45 am, making the trek over to the O.P. for a few hours of hot springs soaking and ultimately returning to Seattle around 10:30 pm. Since it’s still winter-ish in the mountains, the trip was billed as a snowshoeing excursion. So we packed our snowgear, a clean (and more importantly *warm*) change of clothes, the necessary after-soak bath towel, some snacks and as is mandated for all backcountry trips, a full three bottles of red wine.
The morning we left the sky was a misty gray that threatened rain. However by the time we reached the parking area near the trailhead the cloud layer had burned away leaving only crystal blue sky and a very manageable cool temperature. I had checked the NPS website for the trail conditions in the morning, and despite it claiming there was up to four feet of snow in places, from where we parked there wasn’t even slush mound to be seen. It was a perfect cool spring morning.
We started out towards the trailhead leaving our snowshoes behind — at the time it didn’t make any sense to bring the extra weight on a journey which clearly didn’t call for extra snow gear. From where we parked, the walk to the trailhead is an easy 2.5 miles entirely on a paved asphalt road with next to no incline. A little past the first mile we started to see hints of packed snow hidden under the tree canopy shadow. This was to be expected, so we continued on figuring that returning to retrieve our snowshoes would be a waste of time. We reached the trailhead; the snow is now about 9-10 inches deep. Despite this, we make decent time, partly because we are taking a well trodden path, partly because we’re just all fast walkers. We start the hike up to the springs.
From the trailhead to the springs is an additional 2.5 mile hike (also labelled as an “easy grade” but I’m sure that is more applicable when there isn’t snow on the trail). The more we continue up, the more snow we encounter. The snow itself did not bug me at all — even when it became clear that the path we were on was easily 3 feet above the ground. What gave me a little pause were the valleys and rock streams we had to ford. Bear in mind that we are still walking on an ice path about a foot wide surfaced with a quarter inch of wet ice. From this vantage point, now scramble down a 40 degree incline to shimmy across wet rocks and then shimmy up another 40 degree incline. In hindsight, the Eagle Scout in me wonders why my safety klaxon didn’t go off. Finally, we make it up to the hot springs and find an unoccupied, off-the-path spring for us to use.
Now I have never been in a hot spring before, so I wasn’t particularly sure what to expect, beyond it revolving around nekkid soaking in 1) water that is hot, where 2) that water is being fed from a spring. To be sure, both of those points are accurate. What I had not considered were the implications of hot spring water trickling from the underneath a mountain: namely, dissolved minerals. The sheer amount of dissolved minerals gave the water an interesting deep sea-green color. It also made the water feel thick and soapy to the touch (this is, I presume, why water softeners use huge bags of salt). There was, I must add, an odor as well. Charitably one could say the smell was of slightly ripened egg salad (if one were uncharitable, the smell was not unlike a faint flatulence). We remained undeterred. Propping up our bags so they would not get wet, we stripped off our hiking clothes and settled au naturale into the pool.
At the start of our soak, the conversation centered around ideas. We opened the first bottle of wine and passed it around. A while later we were near polishing off bottle two and the talk had progressed to events and current happenings. By the time the third bottle ran dry (and no small amount of alcohol buzz going around) we were down to talking about people. In general: people we’ve slept with, people we haven’t slept with but for whom we would entertain the notion, and finally people we would never touch regardless of circumstance.
Right around this time, a large group of 10 people (about 5 couples) showed up at our pool. We had been making plenty of noise — and frankly shouting out some pretty outrageous things — in an effort to keep folks away. Regardless, a pack of European expats showed up. Upon seeing four grown men in the hot spring, fully half their group went to find greener pastures. The remainder put down their bags (not really daypacks, but *bags*) and started to put on swimsuits. Seeing this James let them know we were naked. The euro-hipsters then opted to go in the buff.
The newcomers didn’t stick around for too long, maybe about 30 minutes. After polishing off a six-pack of beer and two wine coolers, they promptly got out, toweled off and redressed. We continued soaking for a bit until the light had daylight began to fade.
Leave a Reply