# Grover Hot Springs

Source page: https://carsonriverresorts.com/explore/grover-hot-springs

12 minutes · Open Friday to Monday

Twelve minutes up the Hot Springs Road: two pools in a state park, the hot one fed by a fault and the cold one for afterwards. The fire took this place in 2021 and the pools did not reopen for two and a half years. Phone the pool before you load the towels — the schedule is the one fact here that moves.

## Two pools, and they are not the same water

The hot pool is mineral water off a fault. The cold pool is a chlorinated
swimming pool with a lane line and a NO DIVING sign. People come for the
first and are grateful for the second, in that order, usually within about
twenty minutes.

The hot spring itself runs between **128 and 146°F** depending on how much
snow is melting — far too hot to sit in — so the pool blends it with cold
water down to something a person can stand. That blending is not a modern
convenience. It has been the practice here since the early 1900s.

## What it costs and when it opens

**The pools run Friday through Monday, 10am to 7pm**, in five sessions:
10:00, 11:45, 1:30, 3:45 and 5:30, each an hour and a half, first come
first served — no advance booking. That is the pools' own posted sheet,
photographed at the door in September 2026.

**Parking at the pool is $8**, or $7 if you are 62 or over — the posted
sheet's only stated fee. The park's website has also listed pool admission
at adults $10 / children $5; confirm at the gate. The park itself is open
sunrise to sunset year-round, and you can walk the meadow without going
near the pools.

**The September closure is real.** The park confirmed it by phone,
September 2026: the pools close for two full weeks of maintenance each
fall, usually the last week of September through the first week of
October. Plan an early-fall soak around it.

**Phone before you go: (530) 694-2249 for the pool, (530) 694-2248 for the
park.** This is not a formality. On the morning we last checked, the state's
own website said the pools were open Friday to Monday in two places and said
the complex was closed in a third, all on the same page.

**Dogs are welcome in the park on a leash, and are not allowed in the pool
complex.** There is also a standing bear notice: food and anything scented
goes in the lockers, day and night.

## The pool is heated by an earthquake fault

Not by magma. There is no volcano under Grover doing this, though the
skyline is made of dead ones.

Rain and snowmelt sink into fractured rock, warm against hot rock at depth,
and rise again — and the conduit is most likely a **splay of the Genoa
Fault**, the same fault that makes the west wall of Carson Valley and last
broke about four hundred and fifty years ago at an estimated magnitude 7.5.
You can drive to its polished scarp near Walley's.

Before anyone built anything here there were **a dozen springs and seeps**,
in two marshy patches about a hundred yards apart on the south side of Hot
Springs Creek. The water is slightly acidic, gas-charged and rich in sodium
bicarbonate, and it leaves **travertine** behind as it cools — look for the
pale mineral crust at the outlets.

## What the fire did, and how long it took

The **Tamarack Fire** came through in July 2021. It destroyed park housing,
the maintenance shop, vehicles, and trail structures, and the park closed
outright.

Day use came back in **May 2022** — hiking and picnicking only, sunrise to
sunset. The campground followed in **June 2022**, and only partly: the water
system had been hit by debris flows, and that governed how many sites could
open.

**The pools did not reopen until December 2023.** Two and a half years.

The park's own page carries no fire notice today, and the campground is back
to seventy-six sites. But the accessibility page still warns that parts of
the meadow trail may be impassable from wildfire and debris-flow damage, and
the Forest Service's caution for burned ground holds beyond the park
boundary: hazard trees come down without warning, burned stump holes collapse
underfoot, and rain moves debris fast.

## Two walks from the same parking lot

**The meadow boardwalk — 0.84 miles each way, ADA accessible.** Compacted
aggregate, mostly under five percent grade. This is the only trail here with
an official published mileage, and the park's own caveat travels with it:
parts may be inaccessible from fire and debris-flow damage.

**The waterfall trail — about two and a half miles round trip, and the
sources disagree.** The park calls it moderate; the trail databases call it
easy; published distances run from 2.3 to 3.0 miles round trip and there is
no official figure to settle it. It crosses the meadow, follows Hot Springs
Creek, and finishes over a **boulder field** where the footing and the
route-finding both get harder. At the end is a waterfall of about fifty feet
in several cascades.

Worth knowing: **the waterfall is not in the park.** It sits on Forest
Service ground beyond the boundary, which is where the burn hazards stop
being somebody's job to manage.

**If you would rather not pay to park**, the Charity Valley East trailhead is
free, nine minutes from here, and about a mile short of the park entrance on
the same road.

## Staying nearby

The park's campground has seventy-six sites. Twelve minutes down the road
there are also [seven cabins, eleven riverside sites and RV hookups on the East
Fork](/grover-hot-springs), open year-round.

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Carson River Resort · 12399 Highway 89, Markleeville, CA 96120 · (530) 694-2229 · store open 8am to 6pm, every day.
Machine-readable facts, units and policies: https://carsonriverresorts.com/api/agent/index.json