I arrived from the Bradford ridge trail at around 2am and there were only 3 others at the springs. Weather was cool and gusty up on the ridge but the winds were much calmer down in the valley although still cool (probably low-mid 40s).
The womb was strikingly clean (looked like someone had just cleaned it) and all the pools were clean other than a few "forgotten" float-y tubes. Whoever cleaned that, big thanks! I enjoyed soaking there while my dinner warmed up in the crab-cooker and with the near-full moon, you could see all the way to the bottom of the pool. Unfortunately, the more I looked around (just with my headlamp), the more trash I saw on the beach and across the creek on that beach as well. Someone had been gracious enough to bag them up, but by morning, the bags were ripped up (critters or a dog). Luckily, the area around all the pools was nice and clean though.
Friday there was a surprisingly small amount of people, and it was a great warm day. Saturday and Sunday were definitely cooler and with more wind, but was still pleasant outside the hot water. Fortunately, the crowds were relatively quiet and respectful (except for some people bringing glass, despite a few people talking to them) although Saturday night there was a lot of shouting which made it a bit difficult to sleep. Relative to other weekends though, I was definitely grateful. Everyone was friendly and had a great time and it was nice seeing a lot of familiar faces.
Monday morning was much warmer than Sunday (or so it seemed) and wind had also died down but I had to pack up and leave unfortunately. Hopefully this weekend will bring good weather!
Unfortunately, I had a full pack and could only carry out about 5 gallons of trash (other than mine) but there was definitely getting to be quite the accumulation of trash around. It's always unfortunate to see such a beautiful place get trashed (literally), but it could be much worse if we didn't have some of the amazing locals around here that help with trash (and cleaning/maintaining the pools, digging out the Arizona, etc). Big thank you to all you who keep DCHS a great place!
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/18/2013 04:18PM by bizarroclown.