Unnamed Thermal Spring
Nineteen miles from Bridgeport, Mono County, sits a nameless spring that reads 72 degrees, tepid. There is a picture of it on file. The owner of the land and the access status are not, so this is a spot to research before visiting. Elevation is a bit under sixty-four hundred feet.
Call it five hundred feet on foot from a road the record does not identify. Winters up here run deep, over eight feet of snow on average, and annual precipitation is about twenty inches. No land unit or designation is recorded, and the annual mean temperature is in the high forties.
Mid to late winter leads the calendar on file. Lower Virginia Creek Primitive Campground is seven miles distant, primitive as the name says. Ownership is blank, so confirm you may be there. No fee recorded. Seventy-two degree water is for wading on a warm afternoon. No chemistry or second name is on record.
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 this 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.
- Setting
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the west.
- Highest ground nearby
- 311 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the west
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 twice the US average of 65. It's higher than at 91% 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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Rustic campsites with fire rings in Jeffrey Pine Forest. There is no trash service please pack out your trash.
this spring sits at 6,383 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 26% stronger than at sea level, so bring sunscreen and drink more water than you normally would.
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this spring is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear.
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