Elk 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.
Elk Creek Hot Spring is in Camas County, ten miles from Fairfield, with hot water in the mid hundred-and-twenties that would need cooling before a soak. The record is silent on who owns it and on public access. A short walk separates it from the nearest road, under four hundred feet, at a little over fifty-six hundred feet of elevation.
High and comparatively dry. Winters drop about seven feet of snow. Annual precipitation is on the low side at around twenty-one inches. From the unnamed road it is a few hundred feet on foot. Bowns Campground is the nearest listed camping, eighteen miles away, so not close. Who manages the land is not recorded.
Best months in the file are the winter three. Hot at the source; test before contact. A dissolved-solids reading exists here, moderate at 302 mg/L, sampled in 1989 along with a high pH. No access or ownership on record. Bowns is a long way for camping.
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 Elk Creek Hot Spring.
- Setting
- Canyon floor
- Steep ground climbs away on both sides of the spring.
- Highest ground nearby
- 291 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the north
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 twice the US average of 65. It's higher than at 78% 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 Elk Creek Hot Spring is alkaline (pH 9.0) with 302 mg/L total dissolved solids.
Bowns Campground, located 25 miles east of Featherville and 18 miles north of Fairfield, is a developed campground composed of 10 units along Big Smoky Creek. Two of the camp sites are double family units. Camping, fishing, hiking, and picnicking are popular activities. Campground amenities include picnic tables, fire rings, drinking water (seasonally) and restrooms. Miller Creek Trail (#087) starts just south of the campground and is open to motorcycles.
Elk Creek Hot Spring sits at 5,660 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 23% stronger than at sea level, so bring sunscreen and drink more water than you normally would.
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