28 hour adventure

 Adventure: I decided to try to find piedra hot springs. I was feeling lazy and didn't start till around 1pm, also to force myself to camp out. First 6 miles were on a closed road with snowmobile tracks, then things got interesting: Nobody had stepped foot on the ~1.5mi trail to the springs since before the last few feet of snow fell, or maybe all winter, and there were no trail markers, but I attempted to follow what seemed like a trail. The elk and deer and cow tracks somewhat converged on it too. I didn't have any maps loaded, just a single point on a green screen where I thought the springs were, and i seemed to be getting closer to it. Now, in my van, after looking at my gps track i know I lost the actual trail almost immediately. Eventually my improvised path took me to another section of closed road, this time with no human tracks, just ungulates. I followed it up river along the rim of a big gulch / wide canyon until i was roughly in line with the hot springs several hundred (thousand+?) feet below. I descended a 33° pitch slope on cross country skis. It was the best way down I could see, and the elk paths also seemed to converge to make switchbacks down towards the river. It was late, I was hoping I could get my way to the bottom of the canyon before dark to camp right by the springs. I could not.  The dark came quickly, and navigating became dumb. I camped out in the deep snow on a cold north face. I ate ramen. It's so quiet in the snowy woods at night.  I woke up cold and put on my frozen boots. I left my tent and huge 0° sleeping bag where it was and bushwhacked through steep woods, eventually taking the skis off and loosely throwing them in my pack. My hands and feet were too cold to stop and properly fasten them. It took me a couple hours to make my way to the river, where i joined up with a heavily packed trail made by elk and cows.  I was hoping the springs would be easy to spot, and they were, almost exactly on my little pin on the green, featureless "map".  By the time I got to the springs the sun had made it's way over the canyon rim and was shining directly on them.  The absence of a steady stream of visitors gave the algea a chance to take over the pool.  It was warm enough that i certainty wouldn't get any colder if i got in.  I almost didn't, but at this point it seemed like i had to.  I laid my naked body into the hot slimey water and let the now strong sun help in my cooking.  My toes hurt as they warmed up to operational temperature.   It wasn't all that comfortable, but i stayed in long enough to get to that 10/10 relaxed and warm.  Cows approached the river from the other side.  A bald eagle circled overhead.  I cooked ramen again.  It wasn't easy to follow my tracks back, with all the hoof tracks obscuring my own boot prints, which often were just small scratch marks on top of a hard icy crust on top of the snow.  But i was warm. And my skis were properly attached to my pack just like the guys on Instagram that the algorithm thinks i should follow, and my pack was small and light.  I nearly lost my tracks when I saw my tent pop out from behind a tree a couple hours later.  I packed everything up into my now big and full backpack and climbed the rest of the way up to the snowed over road.  I took my skis out and rode them 8 miles, mostly downhill, back to my van.  I made it back on tired legs 28 hours after i started.