Rainbow Hot Springs, Pagosa Springs, Colorado

Beetle Kill

Rainbow Hot Springs was comforting and relaxing - the hike up to it, not so much.  The hike itself wasn’t all bad.  It had nice views, and the terrain wasn’t too hard, but the spring was impossible to find.  The hike started out on dirt roads that led to an ATV trail through private ranch land.  We walked about a mile through the ranch, and it got to be a little eerie.  There were so many “Private Property” and “Keep Out” signs I was starting to think that a redneck with a baseball bat was going to leap out of the woods and brain us all!  Luckily that didn’t happen.  Once we were out of the ranch a new fear arose.  Colorado is facing a huge pine bark beetle infestation that is killing lots Ponderosa Pines, causing them to fall unpredictably. Lucky us, we were walking straight through a huge swath of beetle kill.  Knowing this, we were worried that a tree might fall on us at any moment.  Since I’m here writing about this it’s pretty obvious that I didn’t get squashed by a tree, as that would mean I’m dead, and last time I checked…. nope not dead.

As we got to where the hot springs should be I started to wonder if we had missed them.  I really started to think we had missed them when we had to cross a river by scooting over a log.  My mom, who didn’t want to scoot over the log, decided to try and find another way over.  The rocks were too slippery, so she took off her shoes and waded through the freezing water to the other side.  Once she was over my dad and I came to the conclusion that we shouldn’t have crossed and we must have missed the hot springs earlier. Then we darted over the rocks to the other side. My mom on the other hand (with much cursing and swearing I may add) crossed again through the water.  On the other side she sat on a rock and nursed her toes until she could feel them again.  While I waited with my mom for her to be able to walk again, my dad jogged back to ask some women we had seen camping if they knew where the springs were.  He found them doing morning yoga at their campsite (don’t ask me…) and they told him that the springs were right behind their campsite.  At that point I had to resist smacking myself in the forehead because before when we had passed their campsite I was thinking about asking them, but I had assumed that there would be a big sigh saying “HOT SPRINGS” or at least after we passed the springs a sign saying “TURN AROUND, IDIOT”.

When we got in the springs they were the nicest thing I ever felt. The river didn’t flow into this spring so it maintained a comfortable 110 degrees and not once did I feel like a lobster being boiled.