rotenburo testing for realz

Today was the big day: testing off the rotenburo with non lukewarm water. The problem is simple: the water boiler design makes it so that you cannot empty the bath fully while it is still hot (or the heater gets damaged). This means that to fill the rotenburo, you need to fill the bath to the maximum, get it as hot as it will go, drain the top 1/3 so that the heater is still submerged, and repeat until the rotenburo is filled. The other complicating factors are that the stones in the rotenburo are really cold, and heat is lost through the thin hose walls. All of this means that you need HOT water, which is no problem with enough wood. We did several cycles of heating the water to ~125 degrees and then emptying it via the hose into the rotenburo.... and the tub not only held water, but the water was hot!

Doesn't that look inviting?! We made a small granite chair (lower right) for clothes etc.

Soaking in the rotenburo is everything I had hoped: gentle river noises, maples illuminated by soft indirect light -- what could be better

here is Chloe enjoying it


On the way back, we decided to go to Nevada city, where we walked around,

had a nice espresso

and looked around in the shops, and checked out this gigantic ore crushing machine


In sacramento, I met up with a guy who I had arranged to buy an Ozone snow kite. We talked for a while, and it turned out that he used to be a Mammut rep, and does a lot of backcountry boarding, so hopefully he will be able to hook me up with other split boarders this winter!