Hot Springs (Carlin)
Hot Springs at Carlin is scalding water within two miles of town, in Elko County, and it comes out of the ground at around a hundred and seventy-four degrees, far beyond anything a person can sit in. Tomera Ranch Road passes within forty feet. The record names no owner and no access status. There is a photo.
Roadside: the spring and Tomera Ranch Road are separated by a few car lengths. Elevation is about five thousand feet. A typical winter leaves a yard of snow and the year sees about a foot of precipitation, with an average temperature in the low fifties. No water chemistry has been recorded, and nothing describes the source or what it feeds beyond the photo.
The water will scald on contact. That is the first and last thing to know before you get out of the vehicle. The listed months are December through February. Because the owner is unnamed and access is blank, do not treat this as open ground. Fee and camping go unmentioned.
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 Hot Springs (Carlin).
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
- Open ground
- Flat, open ground all around.
- Highest ground nearby
- 74 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the north
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 1½ times the US average of 65. It's higher than at 50% 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.
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Hot Springs (Carlin) is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear. The water is dangerously hot, so bring water shoes and test pools carefully.
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