Big Bend Hot Springs
Drag the handle to compare the two views. The orange dot marks the spring, in a frame about three quarters of a mile wide.
Kettle-hot water comes out of the ground at Big Bend Hot Springs, Shasta County, sixteen miles or so from Burney, far past anything a person can enter. Ownership and public access are not on file. Shot Gun Road runs within about eighty feet, so whatever is there sits beside the road. The temperature reading comes without a date.
Roadside, at around sixteen hundred feet, in wet country: nearly sixty inches of precipitation and close to seven feet of snow in a typical year. No land unit is listed, so there is no agency on record to ask about the ground, and nothing names who, if anyone, keeps the road open.
Winter months are listed as best, though seven feet of snow says the road may not be open then. Camping on file means Camp 4 Group Campground, fifteen miles away. The water will scald. Stay clear of the source and of anything fed directly by it. Check ownership and access before going; neither is recorded.
Aircraft with laser scanners measured this ground to within inches. The scan strips out trees and buildings, leaving the bare shape of the land around Big Bend Hot Springs.
- Setting
- Canyon floor
- Steep ground climbs away on both sides of the spring.
- Highest ground nearby
- 288 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the south
A slice through the ground from southwest to northeast, about 0.6 miles end to end.
Elevation data: USGS 3D Elevation Program. Aerial imagery: USGS The National Map. Public domain.
That's about twice the US average of 65. It's higher than at 66% of the springs on this site.
Heat flow measures the warmth working its way up through the ground from deep inside the earth. Where it runs high, rain and snowmelt that seep down through cracks in the rock come back up hot.
See every spring on the geothermal heat map →
Heat flow estimate: Stanford Thermal Earth Model (Aljubran & Horne, 2024), CC BY 4.0.
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Overview This group site is nestled in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest on the Upper McCloud River, popular for its three stunning waterfalls.Camp 4 is typically open from mid-spring through mid-fall, offering primitive accommodations near a variety of recreational activities and magnificent scenery.Note: This is not Camp 4 in Yosemite National Park. Learn more about the Camp 4 daily lottery in Yosemite National Park. Recreation During the late spring, summer and early fall, the McCloud Riv...
Big Bend Hot Springs is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear. The water is dangerously hot, so bring water shoes and test pools carefully.
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