Trip Report: 5/17

Here's my report on my attempts at cleaning the springs.

Drove in on Wednesday evening, parked in the Freedom Trail and slept in my car. Got up at 4am on Thursday, headed down with hose and brush. Seemed like all PCT people were camped out when I got down, probably 8 tents total and I'd estimate 20 people max. Nobody in the springs though. I drained the Anniversary, Womb and Contemplation pools. I set to work on the Anniversary pool first which really needed it. I figured out how to connect the hose to the uphill source and make a kind of soft pressure wash with it to rinse off the algae since I didn't have a bucket. The smell of the concentrated algae/human debris at the bottom of that pool was unforgettably putrid, felt all the better to purge it. Moved on to the womb, wasn't able to get too deep in cleaning below where the plug is located but got a lot off. Scrubbed the Contemplation pool and re-plugged all the pools. Spent the rest of the morning scrubbing and siphoning algae out of the Serenity pool. I stashed the hose and brush in a grey stuff sack and hid it in a rock fortress at the side of the PCT. Anyone interested in using it can message me and I will provide more specifics and images as to where to find it. I also found a 4 inch diameter black hose behind the contemplation pool, it was not clearly being used for anything I could see.

After that chilled in the Serenity pool and met up with Trail Coyote(Dennis) and had a good chat about DCHS history and places to check out nearby. Around 10am there were probably 10 PCT people(clothed) and 4 nude people in the springs. As I left around 1pm it was getting too hot to be in anything but the Contemplation pool but getting to be around 30-40 hanging out in the creek/beach/etc. A group of 10 rolled up with a plastic cooler and a ton of gear. Hope they packed it out. The PCT people have been good at gathering the garbage and leaving it all in the place by the trail box, but at this point its 4+ large garbage bags full. I took all the broken glass and glass bottles I could find in the pile back up with me.