Rizzi Ranch Hot 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.
Rizzi Ranch Hot Spring is on Humboldt National Forest land in Elko County, 65 miles from Elko, and the record lists it as open. The water is hot but sittable, at the top of comfortable. This is a snowy spot: seven feet in a winter. A 1974 sample is the only chemistry on file.
The nearest road, unnamed on record, passes within roughly a fifth of a mile, and you cover that last bit on foot. The ground is Forest Service, nearly 5,800 feet up, with twenty inches of precipitation a year and around seven feet of snowfall in an average winter. Whatever is at the spring itself is not described anywhere in the record.
Dead of winter is the rated season. Seven feet of snowfall is a lot to walk through between December and February. Open to the public, free as far as the record knows, no campground listed. The 1974 water sample shows sodium and chloride. At this temperature sitting in it is fine for most people.
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 Rizzi Ranch Hot Spring.
- Setting
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the northeast.
- Highest ground nearby
- 234 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the northeast
A slice through the ground from southwest to northeast, 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.
The water at Rizzi Ranch Hot Spring is slightly alkaline (pH 7.4).
Rizzi Ranch Hot Spring sits at 5,808 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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