White Creek Group
White Creek Group is the name on file for a set of thermal vents in Yellowstone National Park, a little over half a mile off Firehole Lake Drive, with West Yellowstone roughly 13 miles away. The reading is scalding, within thirty degrees of boiling. Access is open, and the Park Service holds the land. The word Group in the name points to more than one feature, though the record logs it as a single point.
Firehole Lake Drive is where you start, and the walk is around six tenths of a mile. Elevation is near 7,500 feet. Snow here is serious, roughly twelve feet in a normal winter, and warm days are rare enough that the average over twelve months lands in the mid thirties. Precipitation comes to a couple of feet a year. The ground is cold for most of it.
Winter is what the record calls the best season. Make sure Firehole Lake Drive is passable before you head out in the cold months. The nearest camping on file is Big Springs Group Area in Island Park, about 23 miles away. Water this near boiling scalds on contact, so stay well clear of it. No fee is recorded. Nothing is known on file about the water 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 White Creek Group.
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
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the south.
- Highest ground nearby
- 217 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the south
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 about twice the US average of 65. It's higher than at 83% 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 Big Springs Group Area is located 22 miles south of West Yellowstone, Montana in beautiful Island Park, Idaho at an approximate elevation of 6,300 feet. Visitors love Island Park for its world-class fishing and outstanding scenery and wildlife viewing opportunities.Recreation Big Springs is the headwaters of Henry's Fork and is one of the largest springs in the country. Henry's Fork is considered one of the best fly-fishing streams in the nation. Fishermen cast for rainbow and brook...
White Creek Group sits at 7,514 feet above sea level, way above the mile-high mark. You may not feel the altitude strongly, but hot water still dehydrates you faster at elevation. UV is about 30% stronger than at sea level, so bring sunscreen and drink more water than you normally would.
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White Creek Group is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear. The water is dangerously hot, so bring water shoes and test pools carefully. Cold air temperatures make a changing robe or warm layers essential.
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