Bruffeys Hot Springs
The orange dot marks the spring, in a frame about three quarters of a mile wide.
Bruffeys Hot Springs sits in Elko County in northeastern Nevada, thirty-some miles from Carlin, and runs scalding at the source, too hot for skin. It appears in the USGS thermal inventory. Owner and access status went unrecorded, so its standing as a soaking spot is a question, and the raw temperature says no.
Close to a road, a bit over a hundred feet, though no road name is given. Elevation is near fifty-eight hundred feet, high enough that winters bring close to four feet of snow and the year's precipitation runs to a foot. Snow, when it comes, comes in quantity.
Midwinter gets the nod on the record, and with four feet of snow on the ground that means checking the road first. Water this hot will burn; do not put a hand in to test. With no owner or access on record, private land is a live possibility. Treat any soak as a maybe until someone has seen the outflow and cooled it.
USGS hasn't flown a detailed laser scan here yet, so this view comes from aerial photos and older elevation data.
- Setting
- Gentle slope
- The ground tilts gently up to the southeast.
- Highest ground nearby
- 256 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 1½ times the US average of 65. It's higher than at 34% 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.
Bruffeys Hot Springs sits at 5,793 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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