Mickey Hot Springs

What to expect

Mickey Hot Springs is a hot spring you look at, not one you get into. It is a small geothermal field at the north end of the Alvord Desert in Harney County, run by the Bureau of Land Management’s Burns District. The BLM is blunt about it: every pool here is too dangerously hot for soaking.

What you get instead is a miniature version of a Yellowstone basin with nobody else around. The ground is a pale crust of sodium borate deposits that looks like a dusting of snow. Across it are dozens of vents (studies have counted at least 60, 11 of them dry), small glassy runoff streams that reach 180°F82°C, and on a good day gurgling mud pots and steam hissing out of cracks. The centerpiece is a pool 15 to 20 feet across and more than 10 feet deep, so clear you can see well down into it, and close to boiling.

Bands of color mark where the water cools. Thermophilic bacteria grow in layers by temperature, from greens and yellows near the hotter water to orange and red farther along the outflow. Steens Mountain fills the skyline to the west.

Activity changes a lot. After a wet winter and spring the field can be busy with steam and bubbling mud. In a dry late summer you may find mostly empty holes and the big pool. Scientists who have studied the system think it may be slowly winding down.

Getting there

Mickey is remote, and the last stretch is dirt.

• From Burns: Take Highway 78 southeast toward Crane and Burns Junction. Turn right (south) onto East Steens Road, also called the Fields-Denio Road, which runs along the east side of Steens Mountain past Mann Lake. Watch for the Mickey Hot Springs road on the east (left) side. Visitors describe the turn as coming off a sharp bend in the main road, and it is not always clearly signed.
• From Fields: Drive north on Highway 205 for about 1.4 miles, then north on East Steens Road past Alvord Hot Springs for roughly 32 miles to the same turn.

From East Steens Road it is about 6 to 7 miles of dirt road to the parking area and BLM signboard. The BLM warns that the road changes with the weather: dusty and dry, then wet clay, then thick powdery dirt in summer heat. When dry it is usually manageable in a car with decent clearance. After rain it can be impassable, and getting stuck out here is a serious problem.

Note that BLM materials disagree on the distance down East Steens Road, so trust a downloaded offline map with the site marked rather than an odometer reading. The BLM’s coordinates for the site are 42.679586, -118.348682.

From the parking area, a short walk through a zigzag walk-through gate in the cattle fence brings you into the springs area.

When to go

Spring is the best time for activity. After the wet season the vents and mud pots are most lively, the desert is green, and mornings are cool enough for steam to show.

Summer is hot, dry and dusty, and the field can be quieter. Go early in the day.

Fall is pleasant and calm, though water levels in the vents are often low.

Winter brings dramatic steam on cold mornings, but snow or rain can make the access road and East Steens Road difficult. Check road conditions with the BLM Burns District and on TripCheck before driving out.

Rules and etiquette

• No soaking. Treat every pool as boiling water. People have died and been badly burned here.
• Stay on solid, well-used ground. Signs at the gate warn that the crust is thin and can break, dropping you into scalding water. Some ground sounds hollow underfoot.
• This is an Area of Critical Environmental Concern. Do not collect minerals, throw objects into the pools, or disturb the bacterial mats.
• No camping inside the springs area. Hot spring directories report this, and there is nowhere safe or flat to camp on the crust anyway.
• Keep dogs leashed and well back from the pools. Children should be held by the hand.
• Leave the gate as you found it so cattle stay out.

There is no fee and no clothing rule worth worrying about, because nobody should be getting into the water.

Where to stay nearby

There is no lodging or camping at Mickey itself. The closest options:

• Mann Lake, north on East Steens Road, has primitive BLM camping by the lake.
• The Alvord Desert playa, to the south, allows free dispersed camping with no facilities.
• Alvord Hot Springs, roughly 16 miles south by road, is a private ranch with campsites, bunkhouses and two soaking pools. It is the obvious place to actually get in hot water.
• Fields has a small store and cafe with limited rooms. Frenchglen, on the west side of Steens Mountain, has a historic hotel and is close to Barnes Frenchglen Warm Springs.

Safety notes

• Scalding water: Vents average around 171°F77°C and reach boiling. Even the coolest pool at the end of the outflow has been measured at 117-120°F47-49°C, which can burn in minutes.
• Thin crust: The ground near vents can collapse. Stay well back from edges and do not step on wet, discolored or hollow-sounding ground.
• Past accidents: In October 1996 a man died of hypothermia in the southern pool during a night visit, and in April 2017 a California man suffered second- and third-degree burns over about 20% of his body while trying to rescue his dog, which later died. Leash your dog before you open the car door.
• Remoteness: Traffic is very light, cell service is limited and the nearest help is a long way off. Carry water, a spare tire and a full tank, and tell someone your plan.
• Heat and sun: Summer afternoons on the desert floor are hot with no shade.

Nearby stops worth adding

Pair Mickey with a soak at Alvord Hot Springs and a walk out onto the Alvord Desert playa. The Steens Mountain Loop Road on the west side of the range climbs to views over the Alvord basin in summer once the upper gates open.