Mud Volcanoes
Davis Road leads toward this Mud Volcanoes point, which lies a couple hundred yards off the pavement a little over six miles from Niland. It is a thermal feature on the flats by the Salton Sea. The record gives only a qualitative warm and no measured temperature. Owner and public access go unlisted.
Short walk in from Davis Road. The surface sits well below sea level, and the climate is pure low desert with scant rain and hot summers.
No season is named on file. Use the climate instead and go in winter. Land ownership is unknown here. Check it. There is no campground listed and no fee recorded.
This point shares USGS site 331703115344001 with neighboring Mud Volcanoes entries.
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 Mud Volcanoes.
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
- 20 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the northeast
A slice through the ground from southwest to northeast, 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 83% 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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Mud Volcanoes is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear. Bring sun protection for exposed soaking.
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