Schoolhouse Spring
The orange dot marks the spring, in a frame about three quarters of a mile wide.
Schoolhouse Spring comes out of the ground warm on BLM land in White Pine County, four miles from McGill. Access is open. The water is warm, under body temperature, and there is a campground on file a few miles away, Bird Creek, which makes this an easy one to pair with a night out.
Marrujo Road comes within about 380 feet, so the walk is short. The Bristlecone Field Office manages the ground. It sits high, close to 6,500 feet, with nearly four feet of snow in a winter and eleven inches of precipitation in a year. McGill is the closest town and it is close.
Winter gets the best rating, though that is also when the snow piles up. Open, no fee on record, camping at Bird Creek about five and a half miles off. The temperature is a USGS reading with no date. Nobody has sampled the water, as far as the record shows.
USGS hasn't flown a detailed laser scan here yet, so this view comes from aerial photos and older elevation data.
- Setting
- Open ground
- Flat, open ground all around.
- Highest ground nearby
- 74 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the southeast
A slice through the ground from west to east, 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 56% 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 Bird Creek Recreation Area is located in the Duck Creek Basin, high on the Schell Creek Range. It sits at an elevation of 8,200 feet, approximately 25 miles from the small city of Ely. Hiking, mountain biking and off-road vehicle riding are popular activities enjoyed by visitors to the area. Recreation The Ranger Trail can be accessed from this campground. The Ranger Trail is a designated OHV trail that also accommodates hiking and mountain biking use as well. The 30-mile Success Loo...
Schoolhouse Spring sits at 6,480 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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