28.08.2010
Sunday trip to Gamma Hot Springs was a great success, except for the fact that we went out on Saturday instead, traveled for 43 miles instead of 33, hot spring was warm instead of hot, and mountain was Sulphur instead of Gamma.
Turns out I have not done my homework, before posting a callout. Due to popular demand (turns out people are afraid to make extra long trips day before work) we moved the trip to Saturday 4 am. As I got home only very late on Friday, I had no time to check Forest Service website before midnight. Midnight brought staggering realization: there is a reason why I couldn’t find any trip reports to Gamma hot springs since 2001. Turns out in 2003 floods and slides destroyed all bridges in this section of PCT, Suiattle river trail, Kennedy warm springs, and all access road to the area. Great! Instead of just hiking and bushwhacking for 33 miles to an unknown destination that might not even exists anymore the trip is at least 24 miles longer all on closed trails and requires fording or swimming across at least 5 glacial streams.
Because of all that we had to cheat and do something else. Famous “Hot springs in Pacific Northwest” book lists another hot spring in the area, called Sulphur Warm Spring. It is listed as “second only to Gamma hot springs in shear elusiveness”. Even though access to it is not hard, there is very little known about this warm spring, as almost nobody (including the author of the book) can find it. The road is now blocked for cars 11 miles from the trailhead, but we cheated by taking bikes. But we had to reorganize quickly in the morning to get bikes and cars to transport them, so instead of 4 am we only left Redmond at 6 am and arrived to the road block at 8. It took about an hour to bike 11 miles on the abandoned dirt road. We walked less than a mile on Sulfur creek trail, than dropped to the creek bed and started our wet climb on the creek searching for any signs of hot springs. You can smell a faint smell of sulfur here and there, but we couldn’t see any warm water. By noon I was ready to give up. If only not for Yosy, who was brave enough to cross both arms of the cold, fast and deep stream (swimming in it feels like being inside a washing machine for all I know). She smelled a little bit of sulfur on the other bank after crossing, followed the smell and sure enough we found a small puddle of mud, all covered in black slimy algae. Barely a couple of inches deep. Barely warm. But definitely smelly, muddy and bubbly. After some effort we could dig out a small hole in the mud, block the water with stones and thus make a small muddy bath good for one. It was lovely inside!
After spending hours in warm mud, it was finally time to do something useful. With all the time it takes to cross the creek again, search for the trail and refill water supply we only got to Sulphur Mountain trailhead past 4 pm. A couple of people we met on the road told us that it is really nice up there. But we had no idea about how long the trail is. It is long. It is also quite steep. But it was sunny near the river and we hoped for the views. Arriving at the peak at 7 pm we just got last couple of seconds of them. Not enough even to take a picture. Snowy cloud covered everything around us. Soon it was time to put the headlamps on head back. Biking under moonlight was so much fun! Got back to cars at exactly 0 and back to Redmond around 2:30 am.
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