Pool 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.
Pool Creek Hot Spring comes out of Boise National Forest in Boise County, fourteen miles from Idaho City. It is hot, a little above what most people sit in, and the 1982 sample found soft water with low dissolved solids and a strongly alkaline pH. Public access is open. Ninemeyer Campground is half a mile away.
Middle Fork Road is three or four hundred feet from the water. The spring sits low for the forest, in a spot that collects a lot of snow, roughly ten feet a winter, and a good deal of rain besides, thirty inches of precipitation in an average year. Forest Service land, designated national forest.
Camping is easy, with Ninemeyer Campground half a mile off. The three winter months are marked best, which means snow on Middle Fork Road is the main obstacle. The water is only a few degrees past soaking heat, about as comfortable as a natural spring gets without cooling. Nothing in the record restricts access. The sample is from 1982.
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 Pool Creek Hot Spring.
- Setting
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the northwest.
- Highest ground nearby
- 542 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the northwest
A slice through the ground from southwest to northeast, 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 86% 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 Pool Creek Hot Spring is alkaline (pH 9.6) with 245 mg/L total dissolved solids.
Overview:Due to a wildfire, there are no amenities at the campground. Currently there are no developed campfire rings therefore when Stage 1 fire restrictions area in effect, no fires are permitted.A stay at Ninemeyer Campground enables guests to enjoy all the beauty and recreation offered along the (Middle Fork Boise River Road) Forest Service (FS) Road 268. Weather is usually good from mid-May through late September and is easily accessible by car in good weather, although the road is some...
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