Backpacking to Goldmyer Hot Springs

Sense Memory from February 2010

Feb 28, 2021

foggy forest behind the still, clear Middle Fork Snoqualmie River, lined by gravel and bare trees

mossy arms of a vine maple before a foggy distant forest

When: February 2010
Where: Goldmyer Hot Springs
What: backpacking up the Dutch Miller Gap from the Middle Fork Snoqualmie trailhead for an overnight at the hot springs
With: my partner & Brian
Accompaniment: Ships and Clouds by Jim Noir

Goldmyer Hot Springs is a hidden gem in the central Cascades, a petite three-pool hotsprings in the midst of the forest beside a waterfall. To protect the springs and experience, they only allow twenty visitors a day. You leave a voicemail with the dates you want, and they call you back if twenty people haven't beat you to it. (It appears they still have that system eleven years later 😂 but are soon switching to an online lottery.)

Normally, it's a four-and-a-half mile hike* along a forest service road, but part of the road was washed out the year we went. We slogged ten miles up the mostly-forested dirt road to reach the hot springs. It was my first backpack trip after starting a desk job, and my body could tell. I was exhausted by the time we reached the campground, ready to collapse into the springs for a long soothing soak.

Then the caretakers revealed that the hot springs themselves were another half mile up the hill.

😶

You. Can't. Be. Serious.

Begrudging every step, I hauled my ass up the steep trail. After hiking ten miles to the damn hot springs, I couldn't not hike the eleventh. Fortunately, the hot springs proved to be as magical as advertised. We even went back the next year.

(*Pro tip, if you ever go: mountain bike.)

When did you realize you weren't quite there yet?