Gold Fork 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.
About 13 miles out of Cascade in Valley County, Gold Fork Hot Spring puts out water in the upper 120s, hot enough to need tempering before a soak. No owner is named for the ground, and public access goes unmentioned too. No name is on file for the road beside it. Paddy Flat Guard Station, about seven miles away, is the nearest camping the record lists.
The spring is close to the road, around 150 feet, so you will barely leave the car. What there is, is snow: around twelve feet per winter, on top of a wet climate, at an elevation near five thousand feet. That makes this snowbound country for a good part of the year. No photograph is on record, nor any description of the terrain.
The best-months entry reads December through February, which with twelve feet of snow makes road condition the thing to settle first. The chemistry is a 1982 sample and it came back strongly alkaline. Confirm ownership before you go, since the record is silent.
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 Gold Fork Hot Spring.
- Setting
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the east.
- Highest ground nearby
- 195 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the east
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 65% 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 Gold Fork Hot Spring is alkaline (pH 9.5).
Overview The Paddy Flat Guard Station is located in the Payette National Forest of central Idaho. Guests enjoy the remote area for its hunting opportunities and abundance of hiking, biking, horseback riding and off-highway vehicle roads and trails. Abundant streams and numerous alpine lakes within travel distance offer fantastic fishing opportunities. Recreation The Paddy Flat Guard Station serves as an excellent jumping-off point for adventures via horseback, motorcycle, ATV or hiking. N...
Springs Near Gold Fork Hot Spring
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