Spence Hot Springs
Spence Hot Springs has water at body temperature and a parking road named for it, and the record lists access as open. The forest is the Santa Fe, the county Sandoval, and Jemez Pueblo is about eighteen miles off. Redondo Campground is under a mile away. Wikipedia places the group north of the town of Jemez Springs and within Valles Caldera National Preserve, while the record lists it as national forest.
The walk from Spence Hot Springs Parking Lot Road is about a fifth of a mile, so this is one of the easier approaches in the Jemez. High country, over seven thousand feet, with heavy winter snow and a fairly wet year. Forest Service land, plain national forest. Average temperatures are cool. There is a picture attached.
Body-temperature water, so no scald risk at the reading on record. Winter gets the flag, heavy snow notwithstanding, and the parking road may be the limiting factor. Redondo Campground is the nearest, under a mile. No fee recorded. The sample dates from 1972 and shows lightly mineralized water. OpenStreetMap lists it as Spence Hot Spring, singular.
Wikipedia describes Spence Hot Springs as a group of geothermal springs north of the town of Jemez Springs and places them in Valles Caldera National Preserve. OpenStreetMap records the name in the singular.
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 Spence Hot Springs.
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
- Canyon floor
- Steep ground climbs away on both sides of the spring.
- Highest ground nearby
- 807 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the east
A slice through the ground from south to north, about 0.6 miles end to end.
Elevation data: USGS 3D Elevation Program. Aerial imagery: USGS The National Map. Public domain.
That's about 2½ times the US average of 65. It's higher than at 93% 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 Spence Hot Springs is slightly alkaline (pH 7.3) with 224 mg/L total dissolved solids.
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Overview The Redondo Campground is situated in a stand of Ponderosa Pine interspersed with grass and wildflower meadows within the Jemez National Recreation Area. The campground is approximately 8,200 feet in elevation and you can plan for warm days and cool nights. The Valles Caldera National Preserve and Bandelier National Monument are within driving distance, both are accessed via the Jemez Mountains Trail National Scenic Byway (NM State Highway 4). Recreation Redondo Campground is one of...
Spence Hot Springs sits at 7,332 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 29% stronger than at sea level, so bring sunscreen and drink more water than you normally would.
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Spence Hot Springs is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear.
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