Did a 3 day backpacking trip with two friends to Sespe for the first time. We took the 12 mile Alder Creek Trail from Dough Flat Trailhead. The drive there had some extremely rough and steep parts, only 4x4s in the parking lot. Hike was amazing, some really interesting striped rocks along the Condor Sanctuary, encountered one king snake in our path near a steep part of the trail. With that trail you go up as much as down but the total altitude change is 2500ft. Left around 9am and got into the hot springs canyon at sunset around 5pm. Trail gets harder to follow right before the canyon. Water level was predictably low so the creek by the palm camp was a little too hot for us, around 120F. Next day we saw about 30 big horn sheep by the source, moved downstream near the confluence of the hot and cold creek. Old creek was too shallow to enjoy. Made our tub where water was a perfect 101F, spent several hours in it enjoying the sun and moon. Probably saw 12 people over the 3 days we were there. My friend reprimanded a couple for building a fire despite the FS order banning em and the windy and super dry conditions of our surroundings. For the hike out we were lucky to have cloud cover but it was still punishing. A truly epic and beautiful place to soak.
