up the Middle Fork

Originally the plan was to do the annual Snow Lake hike this last week of August, but the response was, as the little ones like to say, a big fat zero. There's been an unseasonable amount of rain this year, some people were out of town, some unextractable from town... but we weren't about to throw in the towel. We just switched gears. Farther, longer, warmer. Bring the towel!
It's August, but it sure felt more like Fall, so off to the hotsprings we went...

The drive up was nice. Sunniest day all week.

I hadn't been since they shut down the road and built the foot bridge, so we took the bike and trailer to cover the extra mileage.


I tryed four times to shoot a vid while riding up, but each time the cameras settings got jostled and rearranged, rough road—

I love it when the environment contributes creatively...


The path to the springs is beautiful.


When we first got up to the springs a group of ten year old girls were just leaving. My "warrior queens in training" as the woman who was with them put it. Alright! good to see... we may phrase it differently, but no doubt we're on the same page. The rest of the afternoon we had the whole place to ourselves.
The next morning we got there right around the same time as a couple and their four year old son—perfect.

The little ones had a great time and I got to go back into the dark steam of the cave. It was so nice just soaking for hours and letting the body rearrange, drinking clear water right out of the stream, and then walking back down the path all relaxed and peaceful.
The last soak was shared with a small parisian family and their NW host. Good company all around.


Here's a vid that's not a vid... wanted to see what a long pan of a still would look like—with sound. Does sound make water move?  maybe only sort of...

The current caretakers are really nice. I'd actually never been in the summer. Usually I go when there's snow, or the possibility thereof. That's my idea of the perfect hotspring experience. But it seems that winter also coincides with the time of year when the caretakers cabin is inhabited by a... well—as a friend put it—a rather curmudgeonly gnome.

So it was a nice surprise to be handed a bag of home-baked cookies and chocolate when we checked out. (We'd woken up that morning, not only to all night of rain, but our food bag, that I'd hoisted up on the food storage wire, was lying on the ground amidst soggy pine needles, a big hole chewed in the bottom from which protruded a half eaten bar of chocolate... Closer inspection revealed that the bags tie line had been ingeniously severed (chewed) by an intrepid squirrel or chipmunk. Somewhere out there, a very well stimulated furry animal was flying through the forest...)
Had we known, the tight lidded plastic food-storage buckets would have been the way to go, but the caretaker didn't realize we were staying overnight, and we didn't know about the crafty chipmunks...


Back at the car CP was sound asleep. The road is rough - but apparently not too rough to sleep. All that soaking makes for good napping...

Earlier she said, "next time, let's stay four days!"