Altnow Hot Spring
The orange dot marks the spring, in a frame about three quarters of a mile wide.
Altnow Hot Spring, over in Harney County, Oregon, is about forty three miles from Burns. Despite the word Hot in its name the record describes the water merely as warm and gives no measured temperature, so the name and the description disagree and neither has a number to back it. The landowner is not identified. Public access was never noted.
A road passes within about sixty yards, unnamed on file, which makes this a stop instead of a walk. The spring sits at roughly thirty six hundred feet, lower than most thermal points in the Oregon high desert. Snow is a modest affair, a couple of feet spread across the cold months, and the year's moisture is middling. Chukar Park Campground, close to eight miles off, is the nearest place to camp that the record turns up.
With no month rankings, plan by the snowfall: cold months mean drifted road shoulders, the rest of the year is open. Drive up and look. Confirm permission before you step off the road, because nothing on file says you may. The water has not been measured. Chukar Park is the camping fallback.
USGS hasn't flown a detailed laser scan here yet, so this view comes from aerial photos and older elevation data.
- Setting
- Valley floor
- Gentle slopes rise on both sides.
- Highest ground nearby
- 72 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 close to the US average of 65. It's higher than at 5% 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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Let the sounds of the babbling North Fork of the Malheur River lull you to sleep at one of the riverside campsites of Chukar Park Campground. This primitive facility offers 19 campsites, seven of which are situated along the shady, lush riparian vegetation. Popular as a base camp with birders, hunters and fishers as well as those venturing through along nearby highway 20, Chukar Park has campsites with partial shade and in full sun. Note that the high-standard, graded county road leading to t...
Altnow Hot Spring is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear.
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