Lower Warm Springs
Lower Warm Springs, which OpenStreetMap calls Sunrise Pool, is one of the Saline Valley Hot Springs, within Death Valley National Park and deep in the backcountry. The nearest town is Lone Pine, twenty-three miles off. The water is hot, right at the upper limit of comfortable. Public access is Open. OpenStreetMap marks the bath type as hot spring.
Backcountry: the nearest road is nearly six miles away, and no road name is recorded. The elevation is around fourteen hundred feet in the Saline Valley, a desert getting about seven inches of moisture annually, with a mean temperature in the low seventies. National Park Service land. The record lists no campground.
The file marks December through February as the time to come. The water is hot; most people will find it at the top end of what they enjoy. It is park land, so park rules apply. Fee is not recorded and there is no chemistry. The record carries a photo. No USGS site exists for it. Six miles of backcountry is a serious approach in desert heat, and the route is not described anywhere in the record.
Saline Valley Hot Springs, per Wikipedia, are three thermal springs in the remote Saline Valley part of Death Valley National Park. OpenStreetMap gives this one the name Sunrise Pool.
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 Lower Warm 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
- Open ground
- Flat, open ground all around.
- Highest ground nearby
- 28 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the northeast
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 1½ times the US average of 65. It's higher than at 39% 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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Lower Warm Springs requires a hike to reach, so pack light but prepared. Bring sun protection for exposed soaking.
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