Moss Ranch 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.
Moss Ranch Spring is a tepid spring in Lake County, roughly 26 miles from Lakeview. The water runs cooler than a bath, warm enough to notice on the hand and no more. Access status is blank on file, and so is the landowner, which puts it firmly in the look-before-you-go category. There is no second name from OpenStreetMap and no chemistry attached.
A short walk, a few hundred feet, separates it from the nearest road, and which road that is, the record leaves out. The elevation is high desert, around forty-five hundred feet. Winter brings close to four feet of snow, enough to make the walk in a different proposition in January than in July. Outside of winter the country is dry.
Aim for the stretch from December to February, which the record marks as best. Nobody wrote down who holds the land or whether the public may use the spring, so check status before walking in. Drake Peak Lookout is the closest camping listed, about fifteen miles out. No fee appears anywhere.
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 Moss Ranch Spring.
- Setting
- Gentle slope
- The ground tilts gently up to the west.
- Highest ground nearby
- 178 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the west
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 close to the US average of 65. It's higher than at 6% 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 Located on the crest of the Warner Mountain Range at an elevation of 8,222 feet, Drake Peak Lookout hugs the wind-swept land surrounding it, offering unparalleled views into Oregon, California and Nevada. The lookout was built in 1948 and has served as a fire detection site for the surrounding area. Historically, Forest Service personnel lived long seasons in the cabin, scanning the region for lightning, flames, curls of smoke or any other indicator of possible forest fires. At one...
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