Reds Meadow Hot Springs
Reds Meadow Hot Springs sits in the Inyo National Forest a few miles from Mammoth Lakes, high in Mono County. The water comes out hot, a bit above what most people can sit in without adding cold. OpenStreetMap tags it as a free natural hot pool. Access is open, the land is national forest, and the road is close, a few hundred feet.
Seven and a half thousand feet up, and the snowfall figure is the story: something like seventeen feet in an average winter. That buries the road for months. The spring is close to roadside, under a hundred yards off, on Forest Service ground. Summers are short and dry. Pumice Flat Group Camp sits about two miles from the spring.
The file names midwinter as the season, though with that much snow the winter listing is hard to square with getting there; check that the road is open before you plan on it. Lower yourself in without testing and the water will scald. No fee is recorded, and the OSM tag says free. Pumice Flat is the camping to aim for.
The USGS sampled the water here in July 1990 and keeps the spring on its books as a monitored site. The OpenStreetMap entry calls it a free natural hot 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 Reds Meadow Hot 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
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the southeast.
- Highest ground nearby
- 334 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the southeast
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 twice the US average of 65. It's higher than at 92% 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.
The water at Reds Meadow Hot Springs is slightly acidic (pH 6.7) with 642 mg/L total dissolved solids.
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Overview Pumice Flat Group Camp is located in the Red's Meadows and Devils Postpile section of the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains, just west of the full-service community of Mammoth Lakes, California. This group camping facility provides access to some of the most spectacular wilderness in the Sierras and many outdoor activities such as horseback riding, fishing, hiking, photography and geologic study of the dramatic landscape. Devils Postpile National Monument and the famous Ansel Adams Wi...
Reds Meadow Hot Springs sits at 7,638 feet above sea level, way above the mile-high mark. You may not feel the altitude strongly, but hot water still dehydrates you faster at elevation. UV is about 31% stronger than at sea level, so bring sunscreen and drink more water than you normally would.
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Reds Meadow Hot Springs is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear. The water runs hot, so extra hydration is key. Cold air temperatures make a changing robe or warm layers essential.
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