Spencer Hot  Springs...twice.

During a marathon Nevada trip, we visited Spencer hot springs after setting up camp at an empty BLM campground about 7 miles away. We parked at the nearest green spot and began poking around....and nearly scared the hell out of a local elk hunter soaking off 5 days of hunting in a tub behind some nearby bushes. Jan charmed the man into  telling us the whole “skinny” on Spencers. The man indicated that there are 3 pools at Spencer. “There used to be a 4th”, he said, “but it got ruined”.. “There’s a really good hot one at the top of the hill and a smaller one over there” (pointing north) All of those were “busy”when I got here. I’ll be out of  here in bit.”, he said, waving a Henry Weinhart’s beer.   The “tub”was basically a 24” x 8’ stock tank with a jury-rigged 4” aluminum sprinkler pipe set up to bring water from the source to the tank. By moving the pipe in or out  of the tank on a horizontal T-post, you could regulate the  temperature.

lower tub at Spencer hot springs. A bit slippery from algae inside but hot and roomy with a carpeted approach and a wood 4 x 12 bench. After trying the smaller pool uphill from this, we returned to this tub when it was vacant.

Soaking in the desert. It is important to carry lots of water, spare gas, and cases of Sierra Nevada  Pale Ale when out in the wilderness.....

Not wanting to wait, we drove up to upper spring which had a European looking couple in a white van basking nude beside the spring. Hot spring etiquette dictates that one try to  find the vacant spring before asking to join a public soak so we pressed on to  the 3rd tub which had a scruffy camper parked about 60 feet away.  I took this as a gimme and parked the trusty truck between the camper and spring and Jan and I bailed out and dove into the 18” x 60” fiberglass watering tank. The water was  nice and hot but and there was an abundance of thermophillic algae making the  thing kinda slimy inside. After a suitable interval, we heard the Elk Hunter’s truck fire up to leave so we went over to “his” tub for a more enjoyable soak.

Caution sign in the  source for the upper pool. In California this would have been surrounded by a  chain link fence to protect the stupid. In Nevada they simply post a sign saying “Don’t stand in the boiling water you idiot!”

After returning to camp for dinner, we drove BACK to Spencer for nighttime soak. A brewing storm had moved in by this time and we were treated to the sight of a full moon and a blazingly bright planet Mars rising in the east with a storm squall pelting us with hail from the west. The upper pool had now been vacated by the couple in the white van and was VERY hot.  I groped around and found a 2”  gate valve letting water  into the pool from the source about 5 feet away and closed it. With the wind and  hail, the pool cooled to a very nice temperature in no time. The pool is about  2’ deep and 10’ across with a nice wood deck and bench. The bottom has a bit of algae in it, but not too much.

Thoroughly soaked  thru, we hopped in the truck and headed back up to our camp. The road here was  sprinkled with “horse apples”, which puzzled me a bit until we saw herds of wild asses (donkeys, not my co-workers!) grazing in the moonlight.  You can tell from the smiles in the self-portrait that driving 50 MPH on a dirt road, at midnight,  in a rain storm, to camp on a mountain pass at 7400’, ten miles from the nearest human being didn’t phase us at all. Not one bit. Nope...not one bit.  Uh huh. (I should add  here that it rained and blew like hell that night and soaked us and our gear!)

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