Barney Hot Springs
Drag the handle to compare the two views. The orange dot marks the spring, in a frame about three quarters of a mile wide.
Barney Hot Springs sits beside Pahsimeroi Road in Butte County, Idaho, on BLM land under the Challis Field Office. Arco is the nearest town and it is forty-five miles away. The water is warm, in the low eighties, under body temperature, so it is a warm spring in practice despite the name. Access is open.
High valley, around sixty-four hundred feet, cold on average, with five feet of snow over a winter and not much rain. The spring is five feet from the road. Meadow Lake Campground is the nearest on record, thirteen miles off. Public land, open, no designation beyond that.
Our climate ranking likes winter here. Pahsimeroi Road runs right past, so winter access depends on the road. The camping option listed is Meadow Lake, some distance away. Water chemistry comes from 1983 and runs alkaline. Warm water only; nobody is going to overheat in it. No fee is recorded.
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 Barney Hot Springs.
- Setting
- Open ground
- Flat, open ground all around.
- Highest ground nearby
- 60 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 73% 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 Barney Hot Springs is slightly alkaline (pH 8.2).
Overview Meadow Lake Campground is located on the Leadore Ranger District of the Salmon-Challis National Forest. This high alpine campground sits at an elevation of 9,160 feet in the Lemhi Mountain Range, 22 miles from Leadore, Idaho.Recreation There's no lack of recreational opportunities around Meadow Lake Campground. The lake is stocked twice a year so the fish are always biting. Fish from the bank or carry your boat down to the lake and try from the water, as there is no boat ramp or boat...
Barney Hot Springs sits at 6,435 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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