Palm Spring
Drag the handle to compare the two views. The orange dot marks the spring, in a frame about three quarters of a mile wide.
Palm Spring is a hot spring deep in the Death Valley National Park backcountry, in Inyo County, with Lone Pine the closest town at roughly 24 miles. OpenStreetMap calls the same spot Wizard Pool. The water is hot, well past comfortable soaking temperature, and the spring lies more than six miles from the closest road. Public access is listed as open.
Low desert inside a national park. Reaching it means a backcountry trip of over six miles each way from the nearest road, which carries no name on file. The Park Service owns the ground. Rain is scarce through the year and what little snow falls does not amount to much. The annual average temperature runs warm, so the months the record prefers are the cold ones.
Go in the winter, December through February. Backcountry access in a national park means checking current conditions with the park before setting out. The water is hot enough to demand a test before you get in. No campground shows up nearby in the record, and no fee is listed.
OpenStreetMap records this spring under a second name, Wizard Pool, and tags it as a hot spring.
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 Palm Spring.
- Setting
- Open ground
- Flat, open ground all around.
- Highest ground nearby
- 37 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 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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Palm Spring requires a hike to reach, so pack light but prepared. The water runs hot, so extra hydration is key. Bring sun protection for exposed soaking.
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