Little Hunter Canyon Springs
Little Hunter Canyon Springs is a warm seep on BLM land in the Ridgecrest Field Office, fifteen miles from Lone Pine in Inyo County, off Saline Valley Road. Tepid water, low eighties. Access is Open. This is desert: seven inches of rain in a year and an average temperature in the seventies.
Saline Valley Road is nine tenths of a mile back, across BLM-managed ground at about seventeen hundred feet. Snow is rare and light, rain rarer. The land designation is plain public BLM ground, no special status. Tuttle Creek Campground is the closest camping at eighteen miles. The access class on file is a short walk.
The best season on record is winter, which counts for something in a place with a year-round average in the seventies. The water is too cool to count as a soak for most people. Fee and chemistry are absent. The USGS has no data on it, though a photo came in with the record.
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 Little Hunter Canyon 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
- Canyon floor
- Steep ground climbs away on both sides of the spring.
- Highest ground nearby
- 548 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the west
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 1½ times the US average of 65. It's higher than at 48% 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...
Little Hunter Canyon Springs is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear. Bring sun protection for exposed soaking.
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