Sleeping Child Hot Springs
Inside the Bitterroot National Forest in Ravalli County, Montana, Sleeping Child Hot Springs emerges hot, thirteen miles or so from Hamilton. Access is open. Water comes out hotter than a soak. A 1974 USGS sample came back alkaline with iron. The Forest Service is the land owner, and no fee appears in the row.
Four hundred feet or so from the nearest road, inside national forest. Elevation is modest. Winters are heavy, around eight feet of snow. Precipitation is on the high side for Montana. Black Bear Campground is the nearest listed, under six miles away. the record names no road and no trail.
Open access on Forest Service land. Hot water, so test it. Winter is what the record recommends, and with eight feet of snow you will want to know road conditions. Black Bear Campground is the camping given. No fee is given. The chemistry is from 1974, and the temperature too.
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 Sleeping Child Hot Springs.
Drag the handle to compare the two views. The orange dot marks the spring, in a frame about three quarters of a mile wide.
- Setting
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the south.
- Highest ground nearby
- 560 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the south
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 close to the US average of 65. It's higher than at 16% 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 Sleeping Child Hot Springs is slightly alkaline (pH 8.1).
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Located on the banks of Skalkaho Creek, Black Bear Campground hosts 6 sites with picnic tables, fire rings, and a vault toilet. There is no garbage service so Pack it in/Pack it out. Campground can accommodate RV's or trailers to 50'.
Sleeping Child Hot Springs 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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