Sloan Cow Camp 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.
Sloan Cow Camp Spring takes some walking. A warm spring in the Beaverhead National Forest, Gallatin County, Montana, it lies some twenty-eight miles from West Yellowstone, and access is open. Warm water, below the range most people soak in. Reaching it takes about a mile and a half on foot from a forest road. No chemistry has been collected.
FS 1209 is the road you leave, 1.6 miles out, so this counts as a hike. High country. Eight feet of snow in a season, with a middling amount of precipitation. Cliff Point campground is about four miles away. Land is Forest Service, designated national forest, with no trail named in the record.
the best months on record says winter, which at this elevation and snowfall is a tall order. Cliff Point is the listed camping. No fee recorded. Open access. No sample date or chemistry backs the temperature, so take it as approximate. Count on a walk in, and on water that is only warm.
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 Sloan Cow Camp Spring.
- Setting
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the southeast.
- Highest ground nearby
- 310 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the southeast
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 92% 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 Cliff Point Campground is located in southwestern Montana on the shoreline of scenic Cliff Lake. It is approximately 43 miles south of Ennis and 35 miles west of Yellowstone National Park. Each site in the small six site campground is equipped with a picnic table and fire ring. There is a centrally located vault toilet and drinking water tap. Some of the sites have partial shade. An undeveloped natural-surface boat launch is very close by and the lake has a no-wake speed limit. Visit...
Sloan Cow Camp Spring sits at 6,574 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 26% stronger than at sea level, so bring sunscreen and drink more water than you normally would.
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