Swim Warm Springs
Swim Warm Springs is a lukewarm spring in the Mt. Hood National Forest, Clackamas County, open to the public. The water is tepid, the temperature of a cool bath. It sits steps from the Whiteaway Trail at a bit over four thousand feet, with Still Creek campground under half a mile away. Mount Hood Village is the closest town listed, twenty-three miles out.
This is the wet side of the Cascades. Nearly seventy inches of precipitation annually and something like two hundred inches of snow, which buries the area for a good part of the winter. The spring is on Forest Service land in the Mt. Hood National Forest, a few yards from the Whiteaway Trail. Still Creek campground is within walking distance.
The record names winter as the best season, which with two hundred inches of snow is a strange call; expect deep snow on the approach in those months. Public access is open, no fee listed. Still Creek campground is the obvious base. A water sample from 1980 shows mildly alkaline water with calcium, magnesium, sodium, sulfate and chloride; the analysis is old.
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 Swim Warm 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
- Valley floor
- Gentle slopes rise on both sides.
- Highest ground nearby
- 159 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the northeast
A slice through the ground from northwest to southeast, 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 19% 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 Swim Warm Springs is slightly alkaline (pH 8.0) with 405 mg/L total dissolved solids.
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Overview Still Creek Campground lies in the shadows of majestic Mt. Hood, in Oregon's Mt. Hood National Forest. It is one of the closest campgrounds to the mountain, and offers access to a variety of recreational opportunities. The surrounding area contains hiking, mountain biking and horseback riding trails, as well as numerous mountain lakes, rivers and creeks.Recreation A variety of hiking, mountain biking and horseback riding trails can be accessed from the campground, including the histo...
Swim Warm Springs is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear. Cold air temperatures make a changing robe or warm layers essential.
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