Friday Photo #5

Pagosa Springs and the San Juan River

More travel photos, but this one is much more current. I took a trip to New Mexico a couple weeks ago, to visit my good friends Miya and Andrew. We did some skiing in the area, including an overnight trip up to Colorado, where we skiied at Wolf Creek and stayed at the Pagosa Springs Resort.

I like Pagosa Springs a lot. The town strikes an interesting balance; it caters to tourists but doesn't feel dominated by them. The centerpiece is the hot springs resort, right on the San Juan River. The resort lodging is rather forgettable -- clean and functional at the level of a cared-for roadside motel. The springs themselves are the attraction, and they're worth the visit. The resort springs are manmade pools, sculpted into grottoes that provide an aesthetically pleasing experience. The water itself is mineral-laden and is heated by natural hot springs on the site. The coldest pools are near the river, about 80°F, with the hottest pools above 115°F.

I have visited the resort before, but this experience was unique. Pagosa Springs has been covered in snow this winter, and the whole town was shrouded in white. Another couple inches fell on the day we arrived, which was enough to clean things up and present a soft white landscape. And it was cold. Evening temperatures were just below 0°F; in the morning we faced about -18°F. It made for an interesting hot spring experience, but also for a wonderful effect on the atmosphere. The hot pools produced prodigious amounts of steam, blanketing the town in foggy steam and depositing rime ice on any exposed surface. The brilliant sunlight of the morning was bounced and filtered by the billowing clouds. The net effect was of a warm oasis within a desert of snow.

The photo itself is serviceable but not terribly exciting. I grabbed it with my P&S as we walked back from breakfast. (Prior to breakfast there was too much steam to see anything.) But it's an unusual winter image and provides me an icon to remember a wonderful trip.