Fales Hot Springs
Fales Hot Springs is a scalding spring on private property in Mono County near Sonora Junction, about twelve miles from Bridgeport. The owners live there. Wikipedia says it is not open to the public, even though access is blank on file. The water comes out far too hot to touch.
The spring lies a fifth of a mile from an unnamed road, high in the eastern Sierra Nevada at roughly seven and a half thousand feet. Winter here brings ten-plus feet of snow, most years, and a yearly average temperature in the low forties. Obsidian Campground is on file about four miles away.
There is no public soaking here. The property is a private residence and closed to visitors, so the listed best months, midwinter, are academic. The USGS has a monitoring site for the spring. If you are passing through, Obsidian Campground is the nearby camp on record.
Wikipedia places Fales Hot Springs in the Sonora Junction area of the eastern Sierra and gives a slightly lower elevation than the record does. OpenStreetMap carries it in the singular, Fales Hot Spring. The property doubles as a private home.
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 Fales 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.
- Setting
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the south.
- Highest ground nearby
- 339 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the south
A slice through the ground from south to north, 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 81% 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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Obsidian Campground offers opportunity to get away from crowds amidst shade of aspens and pines. Campground is close to Molybdenite Creek and Little Walker River. The river is stocked with trout. Area trailheads offer several interesting hikes. The trail from Molybdenite Creek trailhead splits, with one branch heading south into the Hoover Wilderness, and one looping north along Wheeler Creek to connect with the trail along the Little Walker River. This can be hiked as a loop from Burt Canyon...
Fales Hot Springs sits at 7,491 feet above sea level, way above the mile-high mark. You may not feel the altitude strongly, but hot water still dehydrates you faster at elevation. UV is about 30% stronger than at sea level, so bring sunscreen and drink more water than you normally would.
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Fales Hot Springs is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear. The water is dangerously hot, so bring water shoes and test pools carefully. Cold air temperatures make a changing robe or warm layers essential.
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