Badley 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.
Eight miles or so from Cascade, Idaho, in Valley County, Badley Warm Spring surfaces right at the hundred-degree mark. That is soaking warm, a comfortable bath temperature straight from the ground. It is roadside. Ownership and public access are both blank on the record, and nothing on file says what, if anything, has been built at the spring.
The spring sits a few dozen paces off an unnamed road at roughly fifty-four hundred feet. This is heavy snow country, more than eleven feet in a year. Wet in the other seasons too, and the average temperature is a hair above forty. French Creek Campground, under nine miles, is the camping on file. No land unit is listed.
The best months on record are the dead of winter, and the roads then are your own problem to check. The approach from the road is a matter of steps. Water is very alkaline, sampled once in 1979. There is no note on file saying you may use it, so assume a landowner exists.
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 Badley Warm Spring.
- Setting
- Canyon floor
- Steep ground climbs away on both sides of the spring.
- Highest ground nearby
- 214 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 1½ times the US average of 65. It's higher than at 54% 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 Badley Warm Spring is alkaline (pH 9.6).
Overview French Creek Campground is located next to scenic Lake Cascade in west-central Idaho. It is near the town of Donnelly, at an elevation of 4,850 feet. Boating, fishing, swimming and hiking are popular activities in this scenic region.Recreation Lake Cascade offers excellent opportunities for boating, water skiing, canoeing, windsurfing and sailing. Anglers enjoy casting for rainbow trout, coho salmon, smallmouth bass and perch. Many hiking and biking trails are in the area as well.Fac...
Badley Warm Spring sits at 5,420 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 22% stronger than at sea level, so bring sunscreen and drink more water than you normally would.
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