Summer Lake Hot Spring
Summer Lake Hot Spring sits at the south end of Summer Lake in Lake County, about forty miles from Lakeview. The water comes up at soaking temperature, hot bath range, with no cooling needed. Wikipedia describes artesian mineral springs with four surface sources and complex chemistry. The record does not settle ownership or public access, so plan on confirming both.
The spring is roadside, about sixty yards off a road with no name on file. Winters in this part of Lake County pile up more than four feet of snow, and precipitation for the year is moderate. Elevation is not given on file. For a place to stay the record points to Bald Butte Lookout in the Fremont-Winema National Forest, around eleven miles away.
Midwinter ranks highest on file, snow included. Roadside access. As measured, the water is comfortable for a long soak. No fee is listed and no public access status appears, so check before you visit. Bald Butte Lookout is the camping on record.
Wikipedia calls these natural hot springs at the south end of Summer Lake, artesian, with four separate surface sources and a complex mineral chemistry.
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 Summer Lake 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.
- Setting
- Open ground
- Flat, open ground all around.
- Highest ground nearby
- 11 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the south
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 51% 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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Overview Bald Butte Lookout is perched atop the windy summit of Bald Butte in the Fremont-Winema National Forest in south-central Oregon. It is surrounded by forested hillsides and expansive views. The lookout was built in 1931 and served as a Forest Service fire detection site for over 50 years. It was constructed from an Aladdin L4 ground-mounted lookout kit in which all of the pieces were pre-cut in six-foot lengths or less so the entire kit could be packed by horses into the remote site....
Summer Lake Hot Spring is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear.
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