Hot Springs (Menlo Baths)
Drag the handle to compare the two views. The orange dot marks the spring, in a frame about three quarters of a mile wide.
Hot Springs, carrying Menlo Baths as a second name, lies in Modoc County off Surprise Valley Road, close to thirty miles from Alturas. It comes out hotter than anyone would sit in undiluted. That second name suggests people bathed here at some point, though nothing describes a pool or any facility, and no owner is named.
From Surprise Valley Road it is roughly a thousand feet on foot. Elevation is around four and a half thousand feet in high, dry country. Winter snow is moderate. Whose land this is does not appear in the record, and neither does a land unit, so you are on your own for figuring out what ground you are standing on.
Patterson Guard Station is listed for camping, about seven miles away. The three winter months top the best-months data. Hot enough to scald if you get in without testing, so test before you touch. Public access is unrecorded, so treat it as unverified until you have seen the place or asked locally.
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 Hot Springs (Menlo Baths).
- Setting
- Gentle slope
- The ground tilts gently up to the west.
- Highest ground nearby
- 152 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the west
A slice through the ground from west to east, 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 76% 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.
Overview *Altitude is 7,080 feet above sea level* Set on the edge of a meadow surrounded by Aspen, Fir and Pine trees, Patterson Guard Station has stood since 1921. It served the Modoc National Forest as a fully staffed fire office and guard station until 1981. Just a few footsteps from the Summit Trail and one-quarter mile from the wilderness boundary, Patterson Guard Station can be your basecamp for trips into the South Warner Wilderness or the perfect place to disconnect and relax. The...
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