Guanella Pass
- Right now
- Listed not openA database flag with no reason and no date
- A night
- $26From, per site
- Sites
- 1817 on recreation.gov
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 13 notices
In the agency’s own words
Guanella Pass Campground is located about 7 miles south of Georgetown on the South Fork of Clear Creek on the Guanella Pass Scenic Byway. Located at an elevation of 10,900 feet on the Arapaho Roosevelt National Forest, visitors to the campground can also enjoy hiking and fishing in the area. The Guanella Pass Scenic and Historic Byway follows an old wagon route that linked the mining towns of Georgetown and Grant, Colorado. Keep reading
Recreation
Visitors can go trout fishing on the South Fork of Clear Creek. Silver Dollar Lake is nearby, but cannot be reached by car. Instead, the Silver Dollar Lake Trail leads hikers above treeline to the scenic lake.
Facilities
The campground is split into two loops by the county road and South Clear Creek. There are 18 sites in the campground. Eleven are suitable for RV camping and seven are more suitable for tents. Large RVs are not recommended on the byway. Most of the sites are in the open with some tent sites located among some spruce trees. Each site has a tent pad, picnic table, fire ring and charcoal grill. The roads through the campground are gravel. This facility provides hand pumps with potable water, vault toilets and trash dumpsters.
Natural Features
The Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests and Pawnee National Grassland sit along the foothills and Rockies of Colorado. The forests and grassland cover 1.5 million acres and extend north to the Wyoming border, south to Mount Evans and west across the Continental Divide. The area includes mountains, lakes and five scenic byways, designated by Congress for their scenery, wildlife or history, including the highest road in North America. Mount Evans Road, also known as Colorado Highway 5, allows visitors to drive from 10,500' to 14,130' above sea level in just 14 miles. Contact Info For facility specific information, please call (530) 529-0578.
Nearby Attractions
Visitors enjoy touring historic Georgetown, a former mining town of about 1,000 residents. Additional ghost towns dot the region.
Charges & Cancellations
Modifications for this campground must be made through Recreation.gov or by calling the call center at 1-877-444-6777 PRIOR to your reservation start date. Customers and contact center agents cannot modify reservations on or after the check-in date.
What the agency tells you
There are not electric, water, or sewer RV hook-ups at this campground
This is bear country! For bear and human safety, keep a clean campsite and do not place food or other attractants in your tent. For more information about visiting bear country, contact Colorado Parks and Wildlife at http://wildlife.state.co.us
Limited first-come, first-served sites are available
Everything else this campground posts · 10
https://www.fs.usda.gov/r02/arp to learn more about the Arapahoe & Roosevelt National Forests and Pawnee National Grassland.
Don't Move Firewood: Prevent the spread of tree-killing organisms by obtaining firewood at or near your destination and burning it on-site. For more information visit dontmovefirewood.org.
You must stay on the site you reserved. This is a busy place and site swapping is not allowed.
All campsites must be occupied within 26 hours of the beginning of the reservation. If not present the site will be rented by first come first serve basis.
EXTRA VEHICLE FEES: One vehicle is included in your reservation. Any additional vehicles will be charged $8.00 per vehicle per night and will be collected by the camp host if you did not pay for the Extra Vehicle Add On. One vehicle consists of one camper being towed by vehicle, or any other vehicle towed behind camper. One van or one truck with camper attached counts as one vehicle. Extra vehicles must fit on the parking spur at your site.
Fire Restrictions: Fire restrictions may be imposed at any time due to hot, dry weather conditions, at which time campfires and charcoal fires may not be allowed.
Tents must fit on the pads provided. RVs, trailers or other vehicles must fit on the parking spur. Driving or parking off road is not permitted. The parking length ranges from 20 to 45 feet.
Pets must be on a hand-held leash at all times.
Modifications for this campground must be made through Recreation.gov PRIOR to your reservation start date. Customers and contact center agents cannot modify reservations on or after the check-in date.
Check-Out is at 12 P.M. Check-In is at 2 P.M.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 18 · 7 tent-only
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 45 ft
- Accessible sites
- None listed
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…provides hand pumps with potable water, vault toilets and trash dumpsters. Natural Features The Arapaho…”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…are gravel. This facility provides hand pumps with potable water, vault toilets and trash…”
- Stay limit
- 14 nights
- recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, Creek
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Scenic drives
- Night sky · 466th darkest of 522 in CO
- Bortle 4
- Fall color · reported 14 days ago, 33 km away
- Peak color
No reading yet, book on recreation.gov
recreation.gov lists 17 of the 18 campsites the agency files here. The rest aren’t on its booking system, so a reservation won’t get you one.
No availability snapshot inside the last 36 hours, so this page draws nothing rather than ageing a reading into fiction.
Watch for a cancellation
Full? Watch it.
One email when a night opens, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.
We read recreation.gov once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time a site in your window is free for the nights you asked for.
Scanners that check every few minutes exist, and most of them charge. This one is free, it reads the same calendar, and it won’t always be first.
Tell me when the season opens
Watch for the season to open
One email when the season goes on sale, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.
We check once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time the agency has that season on sale.
Scanners that check every few minutes exist, and most of them charge. This one is free, it reads the same calendar, and it won’t always be first.
We make nothing when you book. The link goes straight to the government.
Every line of the receipt · 15
What you actually pay
“Any additional vehicles will be charged $8.00 per vehicle per night and will be collected by the camp host if you did not pay for the Extra Vehicle Add On.” · the U.S. Forest Service’s own agency notice
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rate for this season, $26 a night, plus one $8 recreation.gov reservation fee for the booking. A weekend here means Friday and Saturday night, booked once. Optional charges (an extra vehicle, a second tent, a dump-station fee) are listed separately and aren’t in this total.
“Modifications for this campground must be made through Recreation.gov or by calling the call center at 1-877-444-6777 PRIOR to your reservation start date. Customers and contact center agents cannot modify reservations on or after the check-in date.” · this campground’s own terms
Who keeps the booking fee
The agency’s own policy text says the reservation fee and the cancellation processing fee are “retained by the reservation service contractor”, and that a campground concessionaire will decline to refund them because “they did not receive these fees”. Recreation.gov is run under contract by Booz Allen Hamilton. What share of your booking fee the contractor keeps isn’t published in any federal dataset we can read, so we print no number for it. Our reporting on the contract →
How we know this receipt · 7
rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
18 sites · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 17 mapped sitesAll 18 sites
Toilet distances are OpenStreetMap’s, measured for 18 of the 18 sites listed. A site with no reading is unknown, never far.
The price is derived by CAMPANAC, not published per site: the per-night rate this campground publishes for each site’s own site type. 17 of the 18 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
Measured shade is NLCD Tree Canopy Cover 2024 (USDA Forest Service / MRLC) read at the site’s own coordinate, 27% canopy or more, and only for the sites the agency gave no Shade value. It never changes the agency’s own shaded count beside it.
| GUAN | 001 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 190 ft | 62 ft | 183 ft | $26 |
| GUAN | 002 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 33 ft | 228 ft | 421 ft | $26 |
| GUAN | 003 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 33 ft | 261 ft | 451 ft | $26 |
| GUAN | 004 | rv nonelectric | 30 ft | 190 ft | 214 ft | 262 ft | $26 |
| GUAN | 005 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 65 ft | 47 ft | 160 ft | $26 |
| GUAN | 006 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 65 ft | 12 ft | 94 ft | $26 |
| GUAN | 007 | type not stated | 30 ft | 31 ft | 66 ft | ||
| GUAN | 008 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 112 ft | 315 ftSouth Clear Creek | 157 ft | $26 |
| GUAN | 009 | tent only nonelectric | 100 ft | 203 ftSouth Clear Creek | 229 ft | $26 | |
| GUAN | 010 | tent only nonelectric | 16 ft | 142 ftSouth Clear Creek | 327 ft | $26 | |
| GUAN | 011 | tent only nonelectric | 13 ft | 130 ftSouth Clear Creek | 344 ft | $26 | |
| GUAN | 012 | tent only nonelectric | 13 ft | 117 ftSouth Clear Creek | 351 ft | $26 | |
| GUAN | 013 | tent only nonelectric | 43 ft | 397 ft | 41 ft | $26 | |
| GUAN | 014 | tent only nonelectric | 64 ft | 434 ftSouth Clear Creek | 72 ft | $26 | |
| GUAN | 015 | tent only nonelectric | 43 ft | 400 ft | 67 ft | $26 | |
| GUAN | 016 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 105 ft | 454 ftSouth Clear Creek | 170 ft | $26 |
| GUAN | 017 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 82 ft | 324 ftSouth Clear Creek | 77 ft | $26 |
| GUAN | 018 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 82 ft | 269 ftSouth Clear Creek | 115 ft | $26 |
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Clear Lake CampgroundArapaho National Forest · 2.6 mi
West Chicago CreekArapaho National Forest · 5.5 miGeneva Park CampgroundPike National Forest · 5.9 mi
Burning Bear CampgroundPike National Forest · 6.8 mi
Echo Lake7.1 miHandcartPike National Forest · 10 miFrom I-25 in Denver, take I-70 West to Georgetown Exit 228. Go south on County Road 381 (Guanella Pass Scenic Byway) for 9 miles.
From Denver take Highway 285 to Grant. Turn right (north) on to Park County Road 62. Drive approx. 14.5 miles to the campground.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Silver Plume, CO
Typical weather
Typical October night 29°F, day 50°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical February night 12°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.
Daily high and lowDays with 0.10 in or more
A normal is the 1991-2020 average for the month, not a forecast: about half of all Julys are colder than the July line. The seven-day forecast above answers the other question.
The land, and who answers for it
what threatens it · who answers for it
Roadless country, and what’s coming for it
You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.
Who answers for this land
Guanella Pass is in Colorado’s 2nd congressional district. Its representative, Joe Neguse (D), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: A+. See every public-lands vote →