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.
Warm Spring in San Bernardino County is a Death Valley backcountry spring, about 29 miles from Searles Valley and seven miles from the nearest road. A USGS crew took a sample in January 1978 and logged the chemistry without a temperature, so the word warm is all the thermal information on file. Park Service ground, and open, and a long way from anything.
West Side Road is the closest road, a little over seven miles off, and the record files the approach as backcountry. The spring is at about 2,500 feet inside the national park. Desert climate, rain comes to about five inches a year, snow once in a blue moon. Average temperature is seventy, which in a desert means summer runs far above that. The record says nothing about a trail.
Best season and campground are both missing from the record, and no fee is mentioned. Park rules apply; check with Death Valley National Park on backcountry travel before you commit to a seven-mile walk in. The 1978 sample showed near neutral pH with calcium and sulfate among the constituents. Temperature unknown. Carry water.
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.
- Setting
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the west.
- Highest ground nearby
- 404 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the west
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 50% 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 Warm Spring is slightly alkaline (pH 7.5).
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Warm Spring requires a hike to reach, so pack light but prepared. Bring sun protection for exposed soaking.
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Springs Near Warm Spring
Slightly Alkaline Springs (pH ~7.5)
Hike 2 waterfalls near Warm Spring
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