Hot Springs Etiquette for People Who Just Found Them

The Kootenays hide some of the best wild hot water on the continent, and the reason they stay wonderful is that most visitors follow rules nobody wrote down. Here they are, written down.

The core three

Pack out everything, including the peel of the orange you swore was biodegradable. No soap in the pools, ever, even the eco kind: rinse away from the water. And leave it cleaner than you found it, which some days means carrying out a stranger's cans and feeling superior the whole drive home. That part's allowed.

Sharing the water

Small pools, big country: give groups their turn, keep the music in your head, and let the person who hiked in have the silence they came for. Headlamps down at night. Dogs are a read-the-room situation. Glass never comes to a spring, and the truck's enamel mugs exist for exactly this.

The unwritten local rule

Some springs are cherished by the communities around them. Buy the coffee in the nearest town, take your garbage past their bins, and don't geotag the fragile ones. On the Hot Springs Loop we'll tell you which is which, because the difference matters.