Vadouvan Curry, Fancy Hot Chocolate and Sespe Hot Springs

When you see the wide green meadow with 3 little bushes, you're almost there. You turn left after the next ridge on an offshoot trail that leads ~1 mile to the spring.

God, I almost don't want to write about Sespe Hot Springs. I almost just want to tell you to hike the 9 easy miles to Willett Hot Springs, where everyone else goes, and leave it at that.


Because right now, Sespe is only 6 miles further than Willett, but a world away in terms of beauty. And after seeing what's happened to Sykes Hot Springs, and what's happening to Willett, I'd really like Sespe to stay beautiful.

To be clear: I've never stayed at the hot springs at Willett. But we were told by a wicked old dude on a horse that they pack out 800-1000 lbs of trash every 1.5 months from the Willett area, and almost every other backpacker (20+ people?) after Bear Creek Camp (4 miles) was en route to Willett. The cliques of 20-somethings contributing to trail erosion, with boxes of wine in their packs, cheap Ray-Ban knockoffs and sideways ballcaps, the same ones limping out the next day, were all headed to Willett. And the Willett area is just about the ugliest spot on 15 miles of trail: dry, dead, brushy, muddy, totally overused. One rubber tub for dozens of people.

The old dude was pissed: he said he should carry a gun to shoot the people who litter. He attributed the increased usage to popularization from the internet. "The big guys can carry in glass. So they bring wine. They aren't the types who used to visit."

Of course, you have to earn your right to visit to Sespe Hot Springs. At least that. 15.5 miles (some estimates say 19) in 80 degree heat and total exposure (in the middle of February, no less) is no easy task, even if the elevation gain is only 1900 ft. It's a long, arduous day of valley after valley. With 15-20 lb packs, Dennis and I kept a fast clip but still spent about 6 hours walking.

A hot bath awaits you... 

So after that much time on the trail, feeling pretty proud of ourselves that our pack weight was so low, that we were barely encumbered by our bags, finally making it to the spring and the (almost) empty camp, we basically collapsed in laughter to find that we'd forgotten our tent.

So we accepted our fate, set up camp (ha!) and prepared dinner while our neighbors, a group of 4, spent some time socializing in the makeshift tub.

Vadouvan Curry with Vegetables and Cream

Vadouvan curry with veggies and cream

Flavor: 8/10

Ease at home: 2/10

Ease at camp: 9/10
Heat level: 3/10

Times made: 2

So this recipe is actually a work in progress. I made it for the first time in 2015 for our Evolution Loop trip. Dennis and Adriana but thought it was good, but I wasn't happy with the flavor and texture, so I never did a write-up. It's not that the curry was bad, per se...it was just boring and bland, and I wasn't digging the fake chicken bits either. I felt that it could easily be improved with a few tweaks, and shelved the recipe for later.

Vadouvan curry: version 1

You can see from a photo comparison that the first version is comparatively pale. It has some tan colored, spongy, chicken-looking bits, diced carrots, corn, and peas (it's what I had), and a creamy broth.

Vadouvan is a labor intensive, allium-based curry mixture. It is a French derivative of an Indian masala known as vadagam, and is thought to have originated from French colonial influence in the Puducherry region of India (Wikipedia).  It has a more refined, subtle, sweet, and indeed "French" flavor than most Indian masalas. It is principally comprised of a variety of alliums: shallot, onion, and garlic, and is spiced with chiles, mustard, turmeric, cumin, and fenugreek. Traditionally the mixture is sun-dried and rolled into balls, but I have always made it in an oven, roasting at a low and slow pace until the entire mixture is a dark brown color. When dehydrated, vacuum sealed, and stored in a freezer to prevent rancidity, it lasts ~12 months, finally losing quality to freezer flavor.

The vadouvan mixture is roasted, dehydrated, and pictured in the top right of the bag.

 In the original version, I used only coconut milk powder, and vastly underestimated the amount of vadouvan I would need. The blasted stuff takes hours, subjects you to terrible onion tears, and produces a measly few cups of finished product so I'll bet some psychology was at work when I allocated the vadouvan mixture to the bag. Unfortunately, it tasted like almost nothing, was barely creamy at all, the veggies were weird and the "chicken" even weirder so after all that work I knew I'd need to revisit and redeem myself and my efforts.

So when I reformulated the recipe, I doubled the amount of vadouvan, reduced the rice per serving by around 30%, added heavy cream powder AND coconut cream powder, and switched up the vegetables a bit (now mushrooms and peppers, a little more French and possibly a little more authentic- still a work in progress).

It took a truly impressive amount of salt but when all was said and done, my Curry v.2 was pretty damn delicious: super creamy, rich, with a sweet and deep roasted shallot flavor, the mustard and chili bringing heat to the fore, cumin adding depth, and fenugreek adding aromatic spice. Everything was there and nothing was missing. Well, almost nothing. It was a little flat due to the richness, needs a touch of tang, so I'll need to pick up some yogurt powder to play with in the future.

Nonetheless, very good and shall we say, "high cuisine"(or anyway, as high as it gets when you're surrounded by dirt)!

Recipe (2 generous servings):

Mix together in a bag (not too far in advance, residual moisture could cause the heavy cream powder to spoil):

• 1/4 recipe of fresh vadouvan (recipe here), dehydrated. For the less psychotic, this can probably be replaced by vadouvan powder or vadagam balls- feel free to experiment. 
• 3 cups basmati rice, dehydrated (appx 1.5 cups dried)
• 4 T heavy cream powder
• 1 packet coconut cream powder
• 1/2 c mixed dehydrated or freeze dried vegetables (dealer's choice!) I used bell pepper and mushroom. Chopped spinach would be great here. 
• SALT. Start with 1.5t, but bring extra so that you can season to taste. This stuff takes heaps of salt.
• Fake chicken, chicken packets, freeze dried chicken...all optional.

At Camp

Boil appx. 3 cups water. Once the water is boiling, remove 1 cup and set aside; add the contents of the bag to the remaining water. Now, add back in water (if needed) until the contents of the bag are covered by water + 1/2 inch. Return the mixture to a boil, remove from heat, cover, and store in a cozy for around 10 minutes or until the meal is rehydrated. It should be like a very thick soup, rice dressed in a creamy sauce. Add more water if needed.

From the Piedra Blanca Trailhead, a view of the Piedra Blanca range in Sespe Wilderness.

You see how I'm holding out on you? I'm not sharing photos of the hot springs yet. I'm just not ready.

So my story continues. We had our dinner, and after dinner we prepared our drinks (Bloody Mary's, currently under development to be featured in a later post), got a few Brussels cookies together, and headed over to the spring. My god, it was perfect. Not too hot, nor too cold. That elusive just-right temperature where you never adapt to the heat and want it to get hotter, nor do you suffer from it being too hot and have to cool off outside. This is the kind of water you can literally spend hours in, and we did.

The pool itself only holds about 7 people, and it's not deep either, around 2-3 feet at most. An unusual and quite pleasant feature of the pool is the long grasses that grow beside it in a mat. When you want to enter and exit the water, you have a gently heated mat of soft grass to step on. The temperature at the pool is perfect, but the source of the water is extremely hot, sources say 190 degrees. By the time it reaches the pool the water has traveled around 1/2 mile from its source. If you travel up to the source, the water is too hot to bear and can easily burn you. At the date palms (a series of small camps a short ways up the trail), the water is still too hot to enjoy. So if you're at the palms you've gone too far, turn around and go back to the creek crossing you passed earlier.

At around 9PM, our skin sufficiently raisin'd, we retreated to bed. Sleep was fitful: the moon was almost full, extremely bright in the sky, and the temperature below freezing.

When we woke the next morning just before sunrise (~5:45 AM), our destiny was clear: get the fuck in the pool right now!

So we trod the arduous 15 feet to the pool and after a chaotic, frenzied removal of clothing, submerged. It was beautiful and surreal to be naked, cradled and comforted by hot water, 15 miles from civilization at the break of dawn. I could not ask for a better apology from the universe for our missing tent.

The frosting on an already incredible cake was the hot chocolate that would soon follow.

Treehouse Chocolate Co. CAMP Coffee drinking chocolate

Flavor, Nina: 10/10

Flavor, Dennis: 9/10

Ease at camp: 10/10

Price: $3/packet
Would buy again: Enthusiastically yes

Best for: Rich breakfast beverage, sweet nightcap with bourbon or rum

Praise: Best powdered hot cocoa mix I've ever had, bar none

Criticism: barely taste any coffee, mottled appearance when mixed with a spoon

So Treehouse makes fancy cocoa, and I do mean fancy. Nevermind the extra mile, Treehouse goes the extra marathon to make an incredible product. It's expensive: you're going to pay as much for one packet of this stuff as you'd pay for a box of Swiss Miss, but the two are apples and oranges, there is no comparison. Swiss Miss is Kraft dinner while Treehouse is real, homemade mac and cheese done right with quality cheeses and good technique.

Treehouse's cocoa (sorry, "drinking chocolate") is unique not only because it doesn't just contain your run of the mill cocoa powder, milk powder, and sugar. Treehouse's mix contains actual shaved chocolate, high quality organic cocoa powder, and cocoa butter. As a testament to its quality and richness, when you prepare the beverage you can see beads of fat floating on the surface. Treehouse directly imports its own cocoa beans from Peru, ferments and roasts them, crushes and processes the roast cocoa nibs into chocolate, and grates the finished chocolate into fine shreds for use in their mix. It's not too sweet, it's extremely full flavored, and when prepared with whole milk powder (optional), it's a wonderfully rich and decadent treat. Treehouse is a true "drinking chocolate" in the Spanish style- the kind of thick, unctuous beverage you're supposed to dip a churro into.

So when you're days, weeks, or months away from home and the smallest delights will make your day, consider bringing a pack of Treehouse. I think it will really bring joy into your travels.

Sespe Hot Springs bathing pool, the morning of our departure.