Basin Creek Hot 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.
Basin Creek Hot Spring sits ten feet off the Salmon River Scenic Byway in the Challis National Forest, Custer County, Idaho. Challis itself is more than thirty miles away. The water comes out hot, hot enough to hurt, well above anything you would lie down in without cooling. Forest Service land, open.
Drive-up. The byway runs past at arm's length. Elevation is around six thousand feet, with snow totals above ten feet in an ordinary winter and an average temperature near forty. Pole Flat Campground is the nearest, about five and a half miles. Precipitation is on the low side, around two feet.
Listed best months are December through February. The byway is the nearest road, so the approach is the pull-out. Hot water warning: source temperature will burn, so do not enter it undiluted, and nothing on record shows a cooled pool. Water is strongly alkaline, sampled in 1983. Camping at Pole Flat. No fee on file.
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 Basin Creek Hot Spring.
- Setting
- Canyon floor
- Steep ground climbs away on both sides of the spring.
- Highest ground nearby
- 669 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the north
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 twice the US average of 65. It's higher than at 81% 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 Basin Creek Hot Spring is alkaline (pH 9.5).
This campground is away from the main road and up the hill overlooking the river and the dredge ponds. Campsites include picnic tables tent pads fire rings with cooking grills. Campground amenities include a vault toilet and drinking water. Sites accommodate trailers and motorhomes up to 32 feet long.
Basin Creek Hot Spring sits at 6,060 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 24% stronger than at sea level, so bring sunscreen and drink more water than you normally would.
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