Strawberry Park Hot Springs
Strawberry Park, located 7 miles outside of Steamboat Springs is a unique hot springs pool that is simply gorgeous! The stone masons that built it deserve to be very proud of their work too, as the entire outdoor pool area blends nicely into the surrounding mountains. So too, do its buildings, that are partially built into the earth.
There are many little pools with varying temperatures and there is a very relaxed atmosphere. Bobbing around in warm water under the sun with bare feet resting on a mostly sandy bottomed pool, may be as close as a Coloradoan is going to get to a beach.
My guess is that this pool would be more to the liking of younger people, due to the laid-back attitude. For example, rules at Strawberry Park change after dark. When the light leaves the sky, children are prohibited, and bathing suits become optional. We were told it becomes “extremely dark” there at night, so I think it safe to assume they provide few if any night lights. I’m guessing the dangers of negotiating these uneven surfaces during the daytime will increase by seven fold at night, so you may want to bring bandages!
Strawberry Park has been described as “remote, primitive and spectacular.”
However, there are many caveats that must be mentioned about this park! Whereas Glenwood Hot Springs employees seemed to be constantly running around assessing the safety of the water, we did not see this occur at Strawberry Park. In fact, the last pool is situated beneath trees and had considerable leaf debris in the bottom of the pool.
Whereas Glenwood had multiple highly attentive lifeguards, we never saw a single lifeguard at Strawberry Park, not even when children were climbing a little dam.
Most cars without four-wheel drive can get to Strawberry Park, but approximately the last two miles of road is gravel with a few sharp hair-pin turns, so weather is an important factor to consider.
I also must issue a strong advisory for older and disabled people. Once there, we were unable to see ANY visible handicapped parking. But even if there were any close spots, we believe most people who are even slightly disabled will consider it an arduous hike to transport themselves from the parking lot to the pools! Upon entry to the various pools, there are minimal handrails and those handrails that do exist are too short for most people. A few of the underwater exit steps are made of sharp-edged stones where a person could easily swing their foot under them and damage their shinbone.
To compare pools, at Glenwood Hot Springs, we saw very good access for disabled people (and have often seen them there), but for many reasons, we did not see any obviously disabled people at Strawberry Park.
Where I would give Glenwood Hot Springs a “10” for safety, I would have to go with about a “3” at Strawberry Park.
Reservations vary between pools but for us, Strawberry Park required reservations and limited pool time to only two hours. (However, we got the impression that on non-crowded days, they may not enforce the time limit).
Once again, some might say that you get what you pay for. Strawberry Park is less than half the price of Glenwood Hot Springs. What to Bring: pool shoes, sunscreen, plastic bottles of water, towels, enclosed nuts for the resident chipmunk, and Band-Aids.
What NOT to bring: dogs, alcohol, or glass.
