I won’t tell you the name of the place or where it is, but I’ll tell you about the weekend I spent there that I’ll remember for the rest of my days.

Somewhere out in the deserts of western America, there exists a series of hot springs, not too far apart, yet each different. This is purely the middle of nowhere, and unless you heard about it through the grapevine, you’d never find them in a million years.

They’re part of a volcanic network, able to be dived, with massive lava tubes and dormant volcanoes nearby. No fences, no parking, no trespassing signs, and incredibly vague directions to get there. On a weekend with nothing better to do, my buddy Jake and I decided to find them. 

Supposedly there were caves, a bunch of people died there, they’re dangerous dives, blah blah blah; I was already sold on going when you said no fences.

…

We drove into the darkness after we were done with work, heading to the lava tubes to camp out before diving the next day. Google Maps took us on a two-hour detour, driving on ancient cattle trails through brush and over sand dunes by flashlight and high beams, making me glad I paid the extra money to get all-wheel drive.

We make it to the correct road; it's as rutted and cratered as the roads I drove in my past life, working third-world countries in the Army. It’s finally midnight when we make it to the top of the volcanic plateau and there are people sitting around a fire., looking at us like we showed up to murder them. We wave, they raise a beer, and we continue on our way.

Back down the mountain we go, stumbling upon the entrance to the lava tube we were looking for; a massive hole in the ground a football field across, descending into the earth at a downward angle, ringed with hexagonal stone formations. We spend the night in the cave around the fire, telling war stories, giving the ghosts of our pasts a little more life, laughing at the philosophy we delve into like we’re in Plato’s cave.

…

We rouse at sunrise to prep and launch the dive. As well guarded a secret it is, many within a two-hour radius still know its whereabouts; the earlier we go, the less of them we’ll see. 

Eventually we make it to the area and the roads are so rutted out around the springs that there's a guy completely stuck in his lifted 4x4, with no way for us to help him. We wish him luck as we treck our gear from stable ground to the springs.

Diving isn’t that dangerous of a sport if you’re smart, but pretty much everyone in the industry agrees cave diving is stupid. Google cave diving and you’ll see why. It's insanely easy to get yourself into a hole you can’t continue forward into or reverse out of, and cave bottom sediment can create blinding zero visibility conditions in an instant if you kick it up.

Suffice it to say, we agree before diving that we won’t be doing any technical stuff if it gets too tight. The second it gets sketchy, we’re backing out. Closest hospital is a 4 hour drive away and an ambulance physically can’t get out here. We each have two tanks, so that's at least two hours of dive time.

We stand around the edge of the first pool at 9 am; there's a couple nervously eyeing us in one corner and a lone elderly hispanic woman shampoos her hair while she sings in the other. Steam rises off the surface of the water into the winter air. Otherwise, its dead silent.

The water is incredibly clear with a bluish tinge, and as we back flip into the water, we’re hit with its 110 degrees of heat. Diving with snow still on the ground and no wetsuit was something I didn’t know was survivable, but this isn’t just anywhere. The deserts of the west are magic; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. There’s a reason why they only seem to attract the people who still have a little bit of wild left in their veins.

We make small talk with the couple as we conduct our pre-dive safety checks on the surface. We have no idea what we’re descending into, and this isn’t the kind of place to cut corners. The spring is shaped like an oval, with a lip of rock jutting around the edges normal people sit on when they come here; in the center of the bowl is a hole that drops down straight into the cavern, for people like us.

The woman makes sure to tell us about all the people who’ve died doing exactly what we’re doing before we go down.

…

We let the air out of our buoyancy control devices and descend into the spring. Edges of rock jut out from the walls, spiraling downward like a staircase, and we use these ledges to gradually lower ourselves into the gloom. Every foot we descend, the cavern expands outwards, and we lose more sunlight from the surface. The water also increases in temperature; small bubbles from hidden thermal vents race past us to the surface.

We finally make it to the bottom and are free to explore the chamber. The floor is a scattering of large boulders with silt in and around their high points; if we kick it up, we’re blind. While safer than caves, caverns are still technical because of the overhead danger; rise too quickly, put too much air in your BCD, or not stay vigilant of your body positioning, and you can hit your head or find yourself pinned; pair that with an inexperienced or careless dive buddy and you’re dead.

Jake uses his dive light to canvas the area and I follow., finding thermal vents big enough to stick our heads into to feel the heat and current push against us from the earth. The bubbles we exhale fly upwards and get trapped on the stone ceiling, looking like liquid mercury. 

This is another world; when you feel that way about a place or time, you need to drink it all up, take in as much as you can. I rock climb up the ledges, wondering if I’m the first to ever do so here, probably correct. 

After a while I descend back down to sit on a prominent boulder on the floor of the chamber and meditate. When most people think of diving, they imagine sharks or shipwrecks with sunken treasure; I think of the peace I get under the surface. Everything is silent except the sound of your breathing, time seems to stand still, and you are completely present; everything you need to focus on in that moment is right there in front of your face. You feel the warmth of the water, the weightlessness of your movement, and nothing else really matters. 

When I am sitting on that rock in the bottom of the cave, I am at peace; there is nowhere I’d rather be. Photos and words can never do it justice, and you’ll only ever get the full picture when you’ve been there; forty feet down, at six thousand feet above sea level.

…

We call the dive after 45 minutes so we can use the same tanks to check out the next spring. There’s no roof on this one, it's twenty degrees colder, and it's only fifteen feet deep. There is one big difference; here there be fish, and lots of em.

An hour surface interval later and we have this second, frying pan shaped hotspring to ourselves. We dive in to check out the fish.

They’re vibrant with tropical oranges and blues, with no explanation as to how they got there. They swim in schools, none bigger than your fist, and hide in little crevices too small for us to get in around the bottom. We chase em around for awhile, soaking up the sun.

…

We call it for lunch after another hour and decide to eat while sitting in the second pool. It’s around noon and the hottest part of the day, a dry 50 degrees. The warmer spring has five or six people lounging in the water, but the second pool is still ours.

We finish the food and plan the next dives, choosing to chill out here for another hour or two before heading back to the first chamber. As I’m lighting up a cigar, two attractive brazilian women walk to edge of the hotspring.

“Hey, mind if we hang out with you guys?”

Jake and I look at eachother.

“Absolutely.”

We spend the next hour shooting the breeze with these fair maidens when another pair of ladies approaches the pool, these ones American; one holding a bottle of whiskey. 

“Mind if we join? I brewed this myself and it's to share.”

It was a weekend to remember.

Almost too good to be true.

*Author’s Note*

Cave and cavern diving is extremely dangerous, even in relatively safe conditions. Never attempt without proper training and equipment. I’m a certified Dive Instructor with 150+ dives logged and have years of experience diving in austere conditions.

(Author’s Second Note: If you know the place, keep your mouth shut)

Post Link:

https://dirtbagmagazine.org/f/almost-too-good-to-be-true