Warm Spring
Warm Spring is all the name anyone recorded for this BLM thermal point in Malheur County, forty-odd miles out from Vale. Warm is the word used, and no temperature ever got written down. Public access is open, and the ground belongs to the Bureau of Land Management's Vale Malheur Field Office. The USGS catalogs it under a site number and little else. Chukar Park Campground is under six miles away.
Thirty yards of roadside, the road itself unnamed on file. Dry country at a bit under three thousand feet, about a foot of precipitation annually and a couple feet of snow. The campground at Chukar Park is close. A water sample from 1992 came back strongly alkaline, with sodium, calcium, sulfate and chloride noted.
No best months are listed. Access is open and roadside, so the main unknown is the temperature itself; the warm label comes with no number, and the only chemistry is a 1992 sample. Chukar Park Campground, under six miles off, is the base. No fee on file.
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 Warm 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
- Canyon floor
- Steep ground climbs away on both sides of the spring.
- Highest ground nearby
- 546 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 close to the US average of 65. It's higher than at 10% 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 Warm Spring is alkaline (pH 9.0).
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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...
Warm Spring is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear.
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Springs Near Warm Spring
Alkaline Springs (pH ~9.0)
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