Sulphur Bank
Sulphur Bank is a scalding thermal site in Lake County, a mile or so from Clearlake Oaks. The water here is far too hot to touch, well past anything a person could sit in. This is a place to look at, if it can be visited at all. Ownership and public access are both blank in the record.
Low elevation, under 1,400 feet, mild year round, rain mostly in winter and only a dusting of snow. About a fifth of a mile separates it from the closest road, which is not named in the record. No land owner or unit is attached. The nearest campground on file is Little Stony, twenty miles off.
Winter is the listed season and the ground stays mostly clear of snow. Short walk from the road. Do not go in the water. At this temperature it will burn skin on contact. Nobody has logged access or an owner, and no fee either, so find out who controls the land before you make the trip. Camping is a long way off at Little Stony.
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 Sulphur Bank.
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 south.
- Highest ground nearby
- 284 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the south
A slice through the ground from south to north, about 0.6 miles end to end.
Elevation data: USGS 3D Elevation Program. Aerial imagery: USGS The National Map. Public domain.
That's about 3 times the US average of 65. It's higher than at 99% 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 This location is available on a first-come, first-served basis only. Visitors are required to physically arrive at the campground to purchase and claim a site.Once on-site, you are able to pay for your campsite(s) by scanning a QR code using the Recreation.gov mobile app, and the Scan and Pay feature.In order to utilize Scan & Pay on site, you will need to first download the free Recreation.gov mobile app https://www.recreation.gov/mobile-app prior to your arrival as some remote area...
Sulphur Bank is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear. The water is dangerously hot, so bring water shoes and test pools carefully.
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