Smith Rock | Informal Campsite

April 15th, 2024 by allison.gray9057

Lovely spot. No reason why you can’t walk towards the trailhead and use the bathrooms. There are some inside the campground and some at the trailhead.

Be warned. There may be cows. Lots and lots of cows. Woke up in the morning to ominous mooing and soon after my van was totally surrounded. Didn’t seem to mind me or my dog as long as we didn’t make any sudden moves.

Looked it up and the national grassland is open to cattle grazing but couldn’t find any schedule of where and when.

May 5th, 2023 by emmalyn

RVers do not camp here! The road is terrible to navigate unless you have a rugged 4x4 vehicle. We made the huge mistake of driving our 36ft RV down this road, based on the last review left on IOverlander, because we prefer to camp for free, but after driving down a super sketchy road, we found the largest pullout but it was so slanted we couldn’t level our rig and so we had to execute a super scary u-turn to get back out. Luckily we made it safely, but it very easily could have been a very bad situation. If you have any qualms about taking your vehicle off-road, definitely walk down the road a bit first and check it out. Sadly, if you have a mid to large sized RV, you’re only option here is to go to the Skull Hollow Campground and pay $15 to dry camp with level spots and safe roads.

September 23rd, 2022 by astridvdgun

On this road a lot of dispersed camping sites. Be aware: on the fist part of the road only at designated sites (the designated sites have signs). After that it’s more free, but it’s a bit of a drive. Beautiful area and even at the end of the road great internet reception. We slept between the cows further on the road, which was fun. Would be great though if people would be more social and wouldn’t “reserve” their spot by leaving two chairs and a table for entire days. We arrived at 16:00 midweek end of September and all sites at the first part of the road were already taken or “reserved”. Second day we managed to secure the same spot as the first day though, right beyond the signed part of the road.

July 6th, 2022 by Mark Turley

In this dispersed camping area North of the Skull Hollow Campground, there are designated spots to camp. You can check the web link to the map showing the area you can camp in. Best suitable for cars, vans, smaller motorhomes and smaller trailers. The road is not very friendly for large trailers. We went on it with a 30 ft. trailer (by accident) and we were afraid we might get stuck without a way to turnaround. But, we did find a nice spot to back into. Getting out we had to do the old 2 point maneuver to get back going SE. Best to stop in the parking area and take a walk to scout the sites if you want the free dispersed camping. If you do go for it with a larger trailer, it turns out there is a big spot to turn around at the end of the area if you don't find anything suitable.

June 17th, 2022 by angelwelp

Closest camping to smith rock. Good internet at the beginning of the road, worse the further in you go. Many spots.

April 26th, 2022 by starrp

great spot, quite a few and the road keeps going

April 13th, 2022 by Leave No Trace

Busy place with climbers since it's so close to Smith Rock. Lots of people looking for spots not long after the park closed.

August 6th, 2020 by nienkestumpel

A well maintained dirt road (perfectly doable with 2WD and low clearance) with a lot of camping spots along the road. Many trees for shadow. Perfect for all: tents, cars, vans and even rvs. Only 10 minutes away from Smith Rock. Good phone reception.
Note: the skull hollow campground is an established campground only a couple feet away. This campground has tables and pit toilets and costs 10 dollar. The camp spots along the road don’t have a toilet or tables, but do have fire rings (but keep in mind that it’s prohibited to make a fire in fire-risk-season)