People who live to ski, or who ski for a living, tend to be unusually calm. Maybe that’s because they’re saving their excitement for when they’re on the slopes, or maybe it’s because they spend so much time among peaks that they have absorbed some of the mountain majesties’ aloof detachment.
Even more than other ski resorts, Mammoth Lakes in the Eastern Sierras seems to attract those who have built their live around skiing. The reason may be that in good snow years, it’s open until mid-summer.
This year isn’t a good snow year. Even so, Mammoth Lakes has other things to offer, including hot springs 20 minutes away, down in the Owens River Valley. The hot springs are out in plain, crudely built from concrete and rocks, freely accessible to anyone whose car can handle the unpaved roads leading up to them. The water is naturally hot and a slight smell of sulfur hints at the heat’s geological origin. Once you have undressed an eased yourself into the pool, the snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada are right there.
We tried several of the springs, all within a few minutes of each other. Because it was a weekday in April, we had some of them to us. Another one was being maintained by shirtless man with a beard and an ancient truck, who only grunted in response to me wishing him good morning. His desire to avoid any form of communication was obvious. His choice to spend his time shoveling gravel in the remote Eastern Sierras may have something to do with this. Another spring had we had to us ourselves initially, until a large family arrived. The patriarch asked me if this was the spring the YouTubers were talking about. I didn’t know, so we both watched a YouTube video of the spring on his phone, with our backs turned to the real spring and the mountains.
What makes the hot springs of the Upper Owens valley special is that they’re open to anyone, without pay, built and maintained by people like the taciturn man we had encountered. Yet they aren’t overrun, they are mostly clean, and we didn’t encounter a single candy wrapper anywhere. It’s maybe not utopia… but maybe it is.
Nehaveigur 