Trail 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.
Trail Creek Hot Spring, off Warm Lake Road inside the Boise National Forest, is one of the hot springs in the mountains outside Cascade. The survey on file calls the water hot, more than most people would sit in without letting it cool, and public access is recorded as open. OpenStreetMap carries it with an s on the end, Trail Creek Hot Springs. Cascade is the nearest town, about seventeen miles.
From Warm Lake Road it is a short walk, under two hundred yards, to the spring. The country is high, close to six thousand feet, on national forest land. Snowfall here is enormous by the numbers on file, near two hundred inches a year, and precipitation runs high across the seasons, so the approach will be under snow for a good part of the year.
Winter is the recorded best season, which here means coming in over deep snow. Picnic Point campground sits about four miles away. Linger in the source water and it will burn you, so check temperature before settling in. The reading is from June 1980. The site is open.
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 Trail Creek Hot Spring.
- Setting
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the west.
- Highest ground nearby
- 303 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the west
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 68% 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 Trail Creek Hot Spring is alkaline (pH 9.7).
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Overview Picnic Point Campground is located on a bluff overlooking beautiful Warm Lake, at an elevation of 5,300 feet. Visitors enjoy boating, fishing, swimming, hiking and viewing local wildlife. Recreation Warm Lake offers great fishing opportunities for cutthroat, rainbow, lake and bull trout. Boating, canoeing and swimming are popular activities. A boat ramp is located at neighboring Shoreline Campground. Billy Rice Swim Beach is within walking distance, offering a day-use site for picni...
Trail Creek Hot Spring sits at 5,760 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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Trail Creek Hot Spring is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear. The water runs hot, so extra hydration is key. Cold air temperatures make a changing robe or warm layers essential.
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