St. George, Utah – Who wouldn’t want to go to a spa? Well, me.
Perhaps you too cringe at all the girly-girl stuff. Maybe New Age music makes your skin crawl and you are skeptical about the alleged health benefits of anti-aging rebalancing aromatherapy seaweed wraps, and you find the whole concept of someone fluttering over you, patting and kneading and rubbing, a bit creepy, yes?
One of the new breed of adventure spas might change your mind. The best combine traditional spa treatments with challenging outdoor activities such as rock climbing, mountain biking and kayaking, so you feel as if you’ve earned that lavender adobe massage.
Case in point: Red Mountain Spa . About two hours north of Las Vegas in the spectacular red-rock country of the Southwest, it has all the usual luxury spa trappings – state-of-the-art facilities, manicured grounds, a solicitous staff and a full complement of massages and body treatments. But the core of its curriculum is a series of rigorous early-morning hikes, led by expert guides over more than 30 trails. In addition, there are dozens of up-to-the-moment fitness classes – Chi Ball Stretch, anyone? – and a roster of serious medical evaluations, such as bone density screenings. Plus, the food is billed as “cuisine,” and they serve wine with dinner. A good sign.
Still, when a gourmetish, outdoorsy pair of friends invited me to come along on what they promised would be a magical getaway of physical activity and spiritual renewal, I went with some trepidation – knowing I was promised something hard-minded and hearty, but afraid I would wind up immersed in a giant vat of essential lavender oil. Even scarier, maybe I would succumb to the herbal goo and not sign up for any of the hikes. Maybe, deep down, I really am a bathrobe-wearing, Yanni-humming sybarite.
Here’s what I learned during three intense days at Red Mountain Spa.
1. Hiking down a mountain is a lot scarier than hiking up, especially if it’s a near-vertical descent on slickrock in the middle of a lava field. The trick to getting down alive: Look at your feet.
Take baby steps. Trust your guide, who is repeating gently, “Heel-toe, heel-toe, that’s right, baby steps, nice and easy,” as he coaches you down the hellish incline. Sliding down on your rear also is OK.
2. Slickrock, despite its name, is not very slippery. It’s actually the loose lava rock that’ll do you in – it looks benign, but it shifts under your feet and can cause a broken ankle before you even bag your first peak. And, by the way, you can have the fanciest, most expensive hiking boots in the world, but they won’t do you much good if you haven’t tied the laces properly.
3. Adventure spas seem to attract an inordinate number of funny, ribald, professional women – and the men in their lives. No girls-only ethos here. The first thing you notice upon arrival at Red Mountain are the men – in the spa, at the salad bar, on the yoga mats and, most of all, on the hikes. The International Spa Association, a trade organization in Lexington, Ky., estimates that almost 30 percent of spa-goers are men these days. “We’re even seeing men-only spas pop up,” says ISPA president Lynne Walker McNees.
Although the gender mix is appealing, it must be said that my most memorable hike at Red Mountain was a rugged, 8-mile trek through nearby Snow Canyon State Park with eight women in their 30s and 40s, most of them doctors from Seattle. Topics of conversation: men, health clubs, running injuries, men, blended families, cute hiking clothes, which male massage therapists at Red Mountain are the hottest, Brazilian vs. bikini waxes, lip stain vs. lipstick, men, alternative medicine, trophy wives, male vs. female cardiologists (apparently it’s still a boys’ club), relationship strategies and penile anomalies.
Probably a good thing there were no guys along.
4. Spa food doesn’t have to mean deprivation. In fact, it’s quite possible to overindulge at dinner – though Red Mountain provides nutritional information for everything, so you have only yourself to blame as the numbers add up. Typical entrees include pan-seared salmon (198 calories, 12 grams fat), fettucine with pumpkin-seed pesto and parmesan (392 calories, 10 grams fat) and roasted breast of duck withherbed potatoes and strawberry rhubarb demi-glaze (257 calories, 5 grams fat). Did I mention the wine?
5. The extraordinary beauty of Utah’s red-rock country tends to put your misbehaving furnace and undone yard work in perspective. Not to get too sappy about it, but those postcard-worthy sunsets, puffy carpets of gray-green sagebrush and theatrical red peaks against blue sky really do distract you from your mundane little problems.
6. The red rocks are actually rusting sandstone. Stained red by iron oxide, they’ve been carved into fantastic shapes by wind and rain over eons. Other geological oddities include slot canyons, volcanic cones, mammoth boulders, lava fields, lava caves and bright red sand dunes. There also are fossils and petrified wood and coprolite (dinosaur dung). Rock hunters routinely find topaz, jasper, quartz crystals and agate – the same stones the Anasazi Indians used to make weapons and jewelry. And if you don’t find any of these on the trail, you can always hit the gift shops in downtown St. George.
7. Desert plant life is astonishingly rich, even in winter. On our hikes, we passed stands of prickly pear, Joshua trees, junipers, barrel cactus and cholla cactus (with hummingbird nests). You don’t want to get too close to the cholla: It looks innocuous, but its barbs are like fishhooks. The creosote bush smells like railroad ties. And the bottlebrush plant, also known as Mormon tea, is a source of ephedra. Mormon settlers ground it up and brewed it for pain relief.
8. A three-hour, back-breaking, calf-straining, knuckle-shredding, toe-numbing hike can energize you. You’d think you’d crave a nap or a soak after all that exertion, but no, you find yourself gravitating to the exercise studio for a stretch class, or a little yoga or cardio salsa. You wonder: Could you transfer this concept to real life? Maybe, just maybe, exercising first thing in the morning could improve your sense of well-being and set you off down a path of renewed creativity and accomplishment. Nah.
9. You’re stuck with the body you were born with, but there’s a lot you can do to help things along. The spa provides body composition analysis, strength training, acupuncture and other services as part of its mission to educate clients on how to lead healthier lives.
“A lot of times,” says health services manager Brad Crump, “they’re not getting this information from their doctors.”
At least I’m pretty sure my doctor would not tell me about a loofah yam wrap.
10. You might be younger than you think. The spa says it can determine your “actual age” (as opposed to your chronological one) by measuring such “bio-markers” as muscle mass, body fat, hip-to-waist ratio and blood pressure, followed by a pushup endurance test. I want to know, I don’t want to know – in the end, I can’t resist. I’m pleased when my “actual age” registers two decades less than my real one but cynical enough to wonder about the accuracy of this finding. Sure enough, my new doctor pals on the trail the next day tell me the test is probably worthless without other key measurements, like a VO2 test to measure oxygen consumption. Gotta get one of those.
11. A Slickrock Survival Fango Treatment may, despite its foolish name, change your mind forever about massages. I’m initially skeptical about this “leg wrap of deep relief mud … detoxifying, healing and deep penetrating with natural pain relievers for sore muscles and joints.” Toxic leg muscles – give me a break. But soon I loosen up as the fabulous Tyler (I’ve heard about his hands from the women on the trail) rubs lovely warm mud (I never do find out what “fango” is) all over my legs, wraps me in plastic, covers me with towels, turns up the Yanni and dims the lights. I baste for 15 minutes, shower, and then Tyler returns to give me the most profoundly relaxing massage of my life. Stumbling out into the night, I can barely find the way back to my room.
12. It’s easy to become a massage junkie. Now I can’t get enough of these things. The heated rock massage is almost as nice as the fango. Warmth penetrates my bones as the masseur places dozens of smooth, hot rocks on my back, stomach, forehead and – a nice touch – between my toes. On the other hand …
13. If you’re claustrophobic, don’t get an adobe body wrap. An unsuspecting friend who was encased in plastic and left to stew for 17 minutes (she was counting) compared the experience to being mummified alive.
14. St. George, Utah, is the best place to live in the United States if you’re an amateur astronomer or geologist. So says John P. Kolb Jr., who is both. Kolb hosts a popular weekly “Star Party” for Red Mountain guests at his house on the outskirts of town. Because of the elevation (3,264 feet) and the thermals coming off the desert and mountains, most nights tend to be clear.
Despite the freezing temperature, enthusiasm is high as spa guests line up to look through Kolb’s computerized 10-inch telescope for glimpses of Betelgeuse, Andromeda and – the celestial pice de rsistance – Saturn, complete with cartoon-looking rings. Nobody notices the 30-degree cold.
15. Sometimes the little parks are just as spectacular as the big-deal ones. Everyone raves about Utah’s Zion and Bryce Canyon national parks, and Red Mountain offers field trips to both. But Snow Canyon State Park, right outside the spa’s back door, is equally impressive. The exquisite little park is home to red and white Navajo sandstone rock formations, lava caves, 1,400-year-
old Anasazi petroglyphs, and an astounding display of desert plant and animal life.
16. A VO2 test can change your life. Twenty-four hours ago I didn’t even know this test existed; now I’m thrilled to find out the spa offers it. The Metabolic Cardiovascular Assessment is a specialized treadmill test that tells you how much oxygen you use when you exercise (more is better), and the threshold at which your body begins to burn muscle (not good). This information is critical to designing a workout routine, says Red Mountain personal trainer Eric Gorecki, because standardized heart-rate charts are notoriously inaccurate. And the test is relatively cheap here – $100 vs. $250 and up elsewhere, Gorecki says. He hooks me up to a treadmill, and I run at increasingly higher levels for seven minutes. I leave with a customized workout program that tells me exactly how hard and how long I need to exercise, based on my oxygen levels – probably the most useful piece of information I’ll come away with during my entire stay.
17. In the 1980s, under different management, Red Mountain Spa was known as the National Institute of Fitness. It was run like a boot camp, with no spa component. People would check in, have their bags searched for contraband food, and then spend their waking hours exercising, eating Spartan meals and focusing exclusively on weight loss.
18. This is better.
…
The details
Getting there: Red Mountain Spa is in St. George, Utah, about a two-
hour drive northeast of Las Vegas. Shuttle service from the Las Vegas airport to the spa is available from St. George Shuttle (800-933-
8320) for $35 each way.
When to go: The spa operates year-round except for Christmas week. Winters are generally mild, ranging from 45 to 60 degrees during the day and in the 40s at night. Spring and fall daytime temps generally are in the mid-70s. In summer, daytime temps range from the mid-90s to 100+.
Packages: Nightly rates start at $219 per person double (winter and summer) and $239 (spring and fall). Included: three meals a day, daily guided morning hikes, unlimited fitness classes and use of the pools and fitness center.
Information: Red Mountain Spa, 800-407-3002,
– K. C. Summers
