Walter promised us dessert, to make up for his absence among other things, and dessert we did receive. This has a bit of back story: after a few Mai Tais, while waiting for the bus into town (not to be confused with the village) Monica was foolish enough to mention that it was a shame we never made it out to any of the natural hot springs around Mammoth. Well, we get to the restaurant, stow our skis, and I locate a cabbie foolish enough to take us to a hot spring I know about and come back and pick us up an hour or two later. After a short hike through snow-covered plain, we arrive at a piping hot tub complete with a PVC pipe and a valve to control how much hot water enters the tub. We watched the sky darken over Mammoth Mountain and the rest of the Eastern Sierra and then watched the stars light up under a moonless sky, at least a hundred miles in any direction from anything you'd call a city. Then we cabbed it back to town, ate dinner and were treated to dessert by Walter.