Smith Cabin 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.
Boise National Forest holds Smith Cabin Hot Spring, a roadside spring thirteen miles from Idaho City in Boise County. It is hot, near the top of the hot range, strongly alkaline on the 1981 sample. The public can go. OpenStreetMap carries the same name as the record, Smith Cabin Hot Spring, so there is no confusion over what to call it.
Middle Fork Road runs about sixty feet from the water, close enough that you could step out of a vehicle and be there in moments. Low elevation for the forest. Snow totals are heavy, a bit over nine feet, with a moderately wet year. Designation on file is national forest.
Ninemeyer Campground is three or four miles away. The record gives December through February as the best season, and whatever nine feet of snow has done to Middle Fork Road by then is worth asking about first. Straight from the ground the water will hurt; let it mix with something cooler first. Forest Service ground, no access restriction 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 Smith Cabin Hot Spring.
- Setting
- Canyon floor
- Steep ground climbs away on both sides of the spring.
- Highest ground nearby
- 493 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the northwest
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 88% 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 Smith Cabin Hot Spring is alkaline (pH 9.5).
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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