Apex Warm 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.
A warm spring outside Dillon in Beaverhead County, roughly fourteen miles from town. Apex Warm Spring earns the word warm and nothing more; the water is tepid, bath-cool, and no one would mistake it for a hot soak. No one has logged a landowner or said whether visitors may come, so the record is thin. No photo exists for it yet.
School House Road runs within a couple hundred yards, and the last stretch is a short walk. The spring sits at valley elevation, well below the high country, in a dry corner of the state that sees moderate snow most winters.
The three winter months get the nod as the better season. Snow here is modest compared with the mountains, so that window is plausible. Birch Creek Cabin, about eight miles off, is the only camp the record turns up. There is no water chemistry on file and no confirmed access, so assume private ground and ask locally before walking in.
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 Apex Warm Spring.
- Setting
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the south.
- Highest ground nearby
- 329 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the south
A slice through the ground from south to north, about 0.6 miles end to end.
Elevation data: USGS 3D Elevation Program. Aerial imagery: USGS The National Map. Public domain.
That's about 1½ times the US average of 65. It's higher than at 45% 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.
Overview Birch Creek Cabin is a historic log cabin with electricity. It provides access to a variety of hiking, ohv, and for cross-country skiing and snowshoe trails (depending on the season). A vaulted toilet lies 100' west of the cabin. Guests can typically access the cabin by vehicle, depending on conditions. The roads leading to the cabin are gravel - but suitable for passenger cars (depending on the season and snow levels). The final quarter-mile may be covered with impassible snow d...
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