Dirty Socks Hot Spring
Dirty Socks Hot Spring is a sulfur spring in Inyo County, around nineteen miles from Lone Pine, on ground that belongs to Los Angeles Water and Power. The water smells, and it is often green with algae. Temperature sits at the low end of soaking warm. The public may visit. It was developed once and no longer is.
Dirty Socks is the road's name as well, and the spring sits a few hundred feet off it. The ground belongs to Los Angeles, held by the city's water utility, at mid elevation in a dry climate: eight inches of rain, and a bit over a foot of snow most winters. The camp on record is Tuttle Creek Campground, nineteen miles or so away.
Winter is the listed season, December through February. Under four hundred feet of walking from the road. No fee is on record. Expect no maintained pool; the record calls it formerly developed, and the water is often discolored.
Wikipedia lists this as a formerly developed hot spring near Death Valley. The name most likely comes from the sulfur odor, which someone at some point compared to smelly socks. The ground is city property, owned by Los Angeles through its water and power utility, LADWP.
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 Dirty Socks Hot Spring.
Drag the handle to compare the two views. The orange dot marks the spring, in a frame about three quarters of a mile wide.
- Setting
- Open ground
- Flat, open ground all around.
- Highest ground nearby
- 37 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the southeast
A slice through the ground from northwest to southeast, 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 75% 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 $10.00 per site per night. No reservations. Open all year. Tuttle Creek Campground offers 83 RV/tent sites, with ten pull-through trailer spaces, maximum recommended RV length is 30 feet. All sites include a fire pit, picnic table and a lantern holder. No hook-up. Potable water is available seasonally. Dump station fee is $10.00, no passes accepted, closed in winter. Closest amenities are 5 miles northeast in Lone Pine. Tuttle Creek Campground SignTuttle Creek Campground siteTuttle...
Dirty Socks Hot Spring is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear.
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