Warm Spring
Warm Spring is a small thermal spring in the Angeles National Forest, Los Angeles County, about nine miles out of Castaic. The water comes up around bath temperature, warm enough to sit in on a cool morning. Public access is open on the record and the Forest Service holds the land. It is a roadside stop, with Lake Hughes Road passing within a stone's throw of the water.
Lake Hughes Road runs right past it. You park and walk a few dozen steps. The land belongs to the Forest Service as part of the Angeles, and the elevation is modest, foothill country at around two thousand feet. Winters bring no snow at all. Annual rainfall is low, the usual dry Southern California pattern, so the surrounding country will be parched for most of the year.
Best months on record run December through February, and for a warm spring in hot country that makes sense: the water feels better when the air is cool. Access is roadside, with no hike involved. Upper Shake Campground is the nearest campground on file, about six miles away. No fee is recorded. The temperature on file is one figure; springs drift, so expect some variation.
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 Warm 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
- Canyon floor
- Steep ground climbs away on both sides of the spring.
- Highest ground nearby
- 701 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the southwest
A slice through the ground from north to south, 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 34% 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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