Chico Hot Springs & Pine Creek Falls

Position: 45°20’16.6″N 110°41’31.5″W

Chico Hot Springs Hotel has been in continuous service since 1900. Its white clapboard and green trim has catered to legions of holiday-makers and celebrities. Actor Jeff Bridges met his wife, Susan, there 50 years ago. Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw were guests. So were we. It is a damn pleasant place to spend a few hours.

Overnight stays are cramped in an early 20^th century way. The small rooms are functional. Beds are “full” sized, i.e. a good foot narrower than a queen. The brass bedsteads keep you from falling out the top or bottom in case of an earthquake. About a quarter of the rooms have an en suite bathroom with a shower and a toilet. For the rest, it’s a trip down the hall to a shared facility.

Did I mention that the hotel is on the National Register for Historic Places? There are many such hotels and buildings in America. If you have a chance to stay in one, you should. Aside from bragging rights, you catch a glimpse of a bygone culture. A more community-oriented one. One where no one had very much and the opportunity to use an indoor lavatory was considered a luxury. Some of the places that fit these criteria, and that we recommend, include the Crater Lake Lodge, Timberline Lodge, and Chico Hot Springs Hotel.

The Plunge

Chico’s main event is its Olympic-sized soaking pool fed by natural geothermal hot springs. Temperature in the large pool, known as ‘The Plunge’, is a human 96F. The small pool is a little warmer at 106F. The restorative waters are flushed out and refilled each day. The Plunge used to have a rounded wooden roof covering it. Back in 1957 the roof suddenly collapsed and injured two swimmers. Given there were 70 people in the pool at the time, it could have been much worse. The roof was never replaced and that’s a good thing.

Transitioning out of your clothes and wading into the pool is a little chilly this time of year. Warmth rises from your feet to your knees as you step in. Soon you flop down and, buoyed by the mineral-rich water, you lay luxuriating on your back. Floating there, you look up at a nearly full moon slipping in and out of the clouds above you. Everything is warm and cosy. Such reveries aren’t easy to come by. They are worth finding.

In cold weather the warmer pool draws people in and keeps them there for hours. Should the heat and humidity become too much, take a break and order a tequila sunrise at the service window. There’s a snack bar, too. That’s mostly for warmer weather, when visitors spend an entire day relaxing and letting their cares and woes flow down the drain. Europeans might scoff at the crude facilities. Screw ‘em, I say. If you’re over 65 it only costs $8.00 to soak for as long as you like.

Supper in America

Dinner on the other hand is another transaction. Chico’s restaurant comes with a good reputation and wallet-emptyingly high prices. This being America, the reward for paying $50 for a steak is that you get far more of it than you can reasonably eat in a single sitting.

Cut to England c. 1983 – Living in London in the 1980s, I, like the rest of the country, read Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course. Delia, for those of you who don’t know her, was Britain’s answer to Julia Child. Only a little more updated. Her many achievements included baking the cake on the cover of the Rolling Stones’ album Let It Bleed. In her book Delia proposed that one should plan on four (4) ounces of meat or fish per dinner guest. She also provided a practical guide to how much wine to buy for a dinner party that went something like this:

• • 2 people will drink 1 bottle
  • 3 people will drink 2 bottles
  • 4 people will drink 3-4 bottles – 1 bottle per person being the logical and empirical upper limit of any host’s largesse.

Such recommendations are charmingly last century. Certainly, Delia’s was a practical guide for protein-starved British dipsomaniacs 40 years ago.

Back in modern America, you can order a 72-ounce Porterhouse steak at restaurants in Texas. If you eat the entire thing in an hour, your meal is free (your cardiologist’s consulting fees notwithstanding). Thus, any restaurant’s business model that promises quality and serves up volume in compensation is suspect in my book. In other words, we didn’t try the restaurant and ate so-so salads in the Saloon instead.

Pine Creek

Leaving the Chico Hot Springs complex I noticed a sign. “Espresso” it said. Having neither eaten nor caffeinated ourselves the sign seemed like an opportunity to tease Carol. Among her many passions in life, being teased ranks dead last. Since she hadn’t seen the sign as we drove past, I mentioned it in passing: seeing as we were on our way to find a hike and breakfast. She put her foot down (fortunately not on the accelerator or parking brake) and demanded I turn around – NOW! I pushed my tease for another quarter of a mile and then dutifully swung back towards the coffee shop. With a couple of lattes and a muffin inside of us, there was no excuse for not heading directly up the hill towards the Pine Creek trailhead.

Cresting the hill, our single-track road suddenly transitioned from dry tarmac to ice and snow. Tall berms of ploughed snow lined both sides of the lane ahead. Further on, in the distance, things looked even more difficult. Not knowing if the road dipped steeply or turned in weird ways, my instincts told me to stay put. Momentarily we wondered if we should abandon our hike, but as I turned back down the hill I said, “We could walk it.” Carol immediately agreed and we parked in a turnout. Now on foot, a half mile up the road my instincts proved correct.

A Tale of Two Trucks

Two men, two children, and two pickup trucks were busily working to extract themselves from a snowbank. One of the trucks had slid off the road into a ditch and stuck fast. He was lucky. Had he slid the other way he’d have fallen a hundred yards down a steep embankment. By the time we turned up, the second truck (the one with the kids) had pulled the first truck out, and the problem was reduced to, “backing up without sliding off the road again”. Despite our offers of help, both men encouraged us to walk around and carry on. “Just give me some good vibes,” the owner of the ditched truck begged us, flipping us the ‘hang loose’ hand sign. Meanwhile, the kids, about three and five years old, a girl and boy respectively, happily tossed snowballs at their dad.

A Winter’s Trail

Hiking in winter demands good footwear. A pair of waterproof boots makes things much more pleasant. My hiking boots were in Seattle at a repair shop waiting for new soles. Four weeks of delays and weak excuses hadn’t produced anything. To bridge the gap, I bought a pair of inexpensive sneakers. Promoted as weather resistant, they are neither waterproof nor high enough to prevent snow working in around my ankles. But that’s what I had, so I went with it.

The Pine Creek Falls trail leads straight into the woods and uphill for its entire length. Well, until you turn around and head back down, I suppose. (Let’s not get pedantic about it – ed.) The recent warm weather made for rough going. At least for me. With three feet of snow still on the ground, I regularly broke through the crust and ‘post-holed’ up to my knees. Carol weighs about half of what I do and wasn’t having the same problem. After a few hundred yards I figured out that the six-inch-wide section directly in the centre of the trail would support me. By walking heel to toe I kept my socks dry. Until I fell in again and rudely cursed Nature and her lousy sense of humour.

Only Fools and Horses

The wind picked up, pushing the tall pines around. High above our heads, treetops creaked and groaned. At one point, Carol thought she heard a bear. This is grizzly country. March is a bit early for hungry bears to leave their dens, but not unheard of. We paused, held our breath and listened. Nothing but the wind growling through the trees. Or so we wanted to believe.

At the falls we looked up and admired the modest flow of water cascading over the rocks and under the rude bridge spanning the stream. Turning around, I immediately slipped off the trail and into another post-hole of my own making. Feeling a bit like one of Robert Falcon Scott’s doomed horses setting hoof for the first time in Antarctica, I paused for a moment and took a breath. I drew in the sheer beauty around me. Then I stopped swearing about the fact we had left our snowshoes in the car. Instead, I appreciated the leaky street shoes that got me there were in fact cause for a minor celebration.

Happier now by measures, I gingerly worked my way back down the mountain towards the car. For the record, a key reason Amundsen, and not Scott, was the first person to plant a flag at the South Pole was he chose sled dogs, not horses, to get him there. The dogs’ lighter weight and furry paws made all the difference when dealing with deep snow. So, it was for Carol in her nice warm, waterproof boots.

Here are a few photos to illustrate our little adventure:

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