The Payette National Forest wraps around McCall and the West Mountains of west central Idaho, and its two tagged hot springs are quiet backcountry soaks far from the resort crowds. Secesh Hot Springs lies along the Secesh River in the old mining country near Burgdorf, and Buckhorn Hot Springs rewards a gravel road drive with a small natural pool and big country quiet. Conditions on forest roads change fast with the seasons, so check with the Forest Service before heading out.
Teapot Hot Springs is a cluster of five to seven seasonal pools at the base of Teapot Mountain, wedged between the South Fork Salmon River and the forest road in the Warm Lake/Yellow Pine area. You’ll smell it before you see it — the sulfur odor is strong enough to notice while driving by — and only one pool is genuinely soakable, at about 107°F.
Buckhorn Hot Springs is a hard-to-find soak on Buckhorn Creek in the Payette National Forest, in the Warm Lake/Yellow Pine area. A gradually inclined 5-mile hike — gaining more than 1,000 feet on an overgrown old forest road — keeps use low at a meadow- and forest-edged spring with a rock-walled pool and a stand-up hot shower.
Secesh Hot Springs is a chain of rock pools perched high above the Secesh River in the Payette National Forest, in the Warren area northeast of McCall. Reaching them takes a river ford followed by a quarter-mile, near-vertical scramble — and the payoff is some of the softest hot springs water in Idaho, in a place that sees very little use.
Council Mountain Hot Springs — also known as Laurel Hot Springs — is a rock-walled soak in the Payette National Forest near Council, Idaho, reached by a forest trail climbing the side of Council Mountain. The single pool runs about 96–98°F, warming as the season progresses, and sees only moderate use.
