 After a cold, snowy day hiking at St. Mary's Glacier, a group of friends and I hopped on down to Idaho Springs to warm up in Indian Hot Spring's geothermal pools. Even though it is less than an hour and a half away from Denver, none of us had ever stopped here before! We were all frozen from hours of trekking through snow, so Indian Mountain was the perfect stop on our way home. It was still snowing when we arrived at the front door, but the lobby was nice and warm.  Newspaper clippings from the hotel's opening. The entrance looked like a typical hotel or motel lobby, since that is the property's primary function. The walls were covered in newspaper articles chronicling the history of the spring, the resort, and the spa. After learning about the igneous magma heating the spring, we walked up to the desk and paid our entrance fees. We chose to do both the swimming pool and caves. The swimming pool is the main attraction, but the hanging photos of steam caves looked really inciting, and I had never been to another hot spring that offered these, so we chose to add it on! It cost $34, per person, for access to both amenities. If you would like to see a detailed breakdown of rates, you can visit their website, here.  An old sign hanging in the lobby. We were given a quick briefing of the layout: the men's and women's locker rooms and steam caves are downstairs on their respective sides of the front desk, and the swimming pool is down the hallway to the left. We all agreed to check out the swimming pool first. We all headed down to our locker rooms, and once we were changed and ready, we met up to walk down the carpeted hallway to the large, steamy swimming pool. What the end of this hallway held was an absolute surprise to us.  The main swimming pool area. The swimming pool area was like a tropical paradise set inside a greenhouse with a hot pool in the center. We were blown away. There were gigantic palm trees and brightly colored flowers lining the walls surrounding the crowded, turquoise water. There was even a tiki bar complete with a thatched roof, and one side of the pool hosts picnics and chairs.
Once we got our wits about us, we found a place on a picnic table to leave our items before slipping into the tantalizing water. Even though it was the middle of the day on a Friday, it was still relatively crowded.  Found ourselves a private spot in the pool! We found ourselves a nice, open corner near the hot water spring. The water flowing from the spout was super hot, but the water around it was the perfect temperature. The farther we moved from the spring the colder it got, but we knew we should share when more groups arrived. We swam and lounged in this gigantic pool for quite some time. When we were ready, the boys and girls went our separate ways to check out the geothermal caves. These caves are naturally filled with hot water from the spring underneath. There were about a dozen different small pools to soak in, and some are hotter than others. Since the cave walls are all natural, they really trap the heat, and the room itself was like a sauna. We ladies didn't stay in here for more than 30 minutes before it got too hot. The caves make for a beautiful sauna, but since it was clothing optional, I wasn't allowed take any photographs.  The boys sitting in the swimming pool. We came out and went back to the pool area to discover that the boys were already there. We joined them for a while, then both groups began to go back and fourth between the pool and caves until it was finally time to dry off and pack up. We were all sufficiently toasty and were ready to make the rest of the drive home. We were all blissful and decided to stop at Indian Springs with every opportunity we get!
1 Comment
Nicole Greco
7/14/2024 01:45:17 am
Indian hot springs is under new ownership - they have a horrible track record regarding cleanliness and are adding terrible chemicals directly into the water to counteract that. They’ve harmed at least 30 people in the last 6 months myself included suffered chemical burns I may have to surgery to fix. They have an investigation with the state health department. I would take this review down, you are putting people in danger leaving it as is. Leave a Reply. |
Talkin' 'bout Tacos:
I'm Taylor, aka Tacos! I am sharing my journeys and experiences from across the world, hoping to inspire travel and adventure in all who read! Archives
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