Yampah Hot Springs Vapor Caves
Drag the handle to compare the two views. The orange dot marks the spring, in a frame about three quarters of a mile wide.
Yampah Hot Springs Vapor Caves is listed within a mile of Glenwood Springs, Garfield County, beside East 6th Street. OpenStreetMap calls this point Yampah Source Spring. No temperature is attached and no chemistry, so the record fixes the location and little else. Landowner and access are unrecorded.
Roadside, under fifty feet from East 6th Street. Elevation is a little below 5,800 feet. Snow totals run past a hundred inches, and the year is moderately wet. Thompson Creek Campground, about sixteen miles out, is the camp the record names.
No preferred months are given. Being in town and roadside, the practical questions are what stands at the site and who runs it, and the record answers neither. Check locally before planning around it.
OpenStreetMap records this point as Yampah Source Spring, a second name alongside the vapor caves label 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 Yampah Hot Springs Vapor Caves.
- Setting
- Canyon floor
- Steep ground climbs away on both sides of the spring.
- Highest ground nearby
- 496 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the north
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 twice the US average of 65. It's higher than at 92% 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 Thompson Creek Recreation Management Area is located just a few miles southwest of Carbondale and provides beautiful, remote recreational opportunities. On the North end of the RMA is the Lorax trail, which is a popular non motorized route. In the southwest corner of the area is the Thompson Creek campground and trail, which winds along Thompson Creek to views of the rare geologic “fin” formations. There are 4 shaded campsites along the creek with metal fire rings. There are not picnic...
Yampah Hot Springs Vapor Caves sits at 5,754 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 23% stronger than at sea level, so bring sunscreen and drink more water than you normally would.
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