Spruce Group - Lake Isabel
1Heads up1 fire 3.6 mi away
- Right now
- Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
- Sites
- 1All of them booked ahead
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 7 notices
In the agency’s own words
Spruce Group Campground, located in the Lake Isabel Recreation Area, is a great place to bring groups for picnicking and camping on the scenic Lake Isabel. The campground accommodates 50 guests for day-use and 40 guests for overnight camping. Some RVs can fit in the paved parking area for added convenience. Lake Isabel is one of the few lakes in Colorado developed purely for recreation purposes. Built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, the lake attracts campers who enjoy hiking, canoeing, fishing and watching for wildlife. St. Charles Creek flows near the campground and offers additional opportunities for fishing. Keep reading
Recreation
Lake Isabel welcomes non-motorized boating and fishing. Brown and brook trout are stocked in the lake and the St. Charles headwaters reap brook trout. Visitors can enjoy hiking, bicycling or motorcycling on either the Snow Slide Trail or Cisneros Trail. The 15-mile Cisneros Trail, also open to ATV riders, leads to the heart of the Wet Mountains, through forests and open, wildflower speckled valleys. Along the way, the trail connects to St. Charles Trail, which heads to St. Charles Peak.
Facilities
Spruce has a picnic shelter that seats 25 to 30 people, plus a horseshoe pit and volleyball court. Two 3-foot wide grills are onsite and individual sites have campfire rings. Drinking water is provided via a hand pump and an accessible double vault toilet is in the campground. There are no defined tent pads. The road through the group site is paved, and a parking area fits a limited number of RVs.
Natural Features
The St. Charles Creek runs next to the campground, and dense spruce trees surround the site. The shoreline of Lake Isabel meets the rocky slopes of the Wet Mountains at an elevation of 8,600 feet. The Pike and San Isabel National Forest includes over a million acres of wilderness and over half of Colorado's mountain peaks that reach above 14,000 feet. Contact Info For facility specific information, please call (719) 489-2034.
Nearby Attractions
The Frontier Pathways Scenic Byway is a great route to explore and shoot photos.
Charges & Cancellations
Group Sites Group Facility (including Cabins and Lookouts): A visitor who cancels a group overnight facility reservation less than 14 days before the arrival date will pay a $10.00 service fee AND forfeit the first night's use fee. No-Shows A no-show visitor is one who does not arrive at a campground and does not cancel the reservation by check-out time on the day after the scheduled arrival date. Staff will hold a campsite until check-out time on the day following the arrival date. No-shows are assessed $20.00 service fee and forfeit the first night's rate, taxes and applicable add-on for a campsite. Refunds Visitors may submit a refund request through their Recreation.gov profile within 7 days of the end date of their reservation. Refunds will not be issued after the 7 days has ended. Refunds for debit or credit card payments will be issued as a credit to the original bank or credit card used to pay. For check or cash purchases, Recreation.gov will mail a Treasury check for refunds of cash, check, or money order payments to the address associated with the reservation. Treasury check refunds may take up to 6-8 weeks to arrive. In the event of an emergency closure, the Recreation.gov team or facility manager will refund all fees and will attempt to notify you using the contact information within the Recreation.gov visitor profile.
What the agency tells you
Be BEAR AWARE; please keep all food out of sight in approved containers or locked inside your vehicle and remove all food from area after eating
This is a high elevation facility, please use caution when traveling from lower elevations
No firearms or fireworks
Everything else this campground posts · 4
Limited water available; no RV water hookups
For more information on Pike and San Isabel National Forests, click here
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.
Cell phone service may not work at this location.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 1 · 1 group
- Hookups
- None
- Paved pads
- All
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…via a hand pump and an accessible double vault toilet is in the campground. There are no defined tent…”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…individual sites have campfire rings. Drinking water is provided via a hand pump and an accessible…”
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, Creek, Beach
- Biking
- Fishing
- Hiking
No reading yet, book on recreation.gov
Every site here is reservable, and the record lists none held back for anyone who drives up.
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 · 12
What you actually pay
“Group Sites Group Facility (including Cabins and Lookouts): A visitor who cancels a group overnight facility reservation less than 14 days before the arrival date will pay a $10.00 service fee AND forfeit the first night's use fee. No-shows are assessed $20.00 service fee and forfeit the first night's rate, taxes an…” · this campground’s own no-show 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 · 6
rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
1 sites · the site map
All 1 sites
The price is derived by CAMPANAC, not published per site: the per-night rate this campground publishes for each site’s own site type. 1 of the 1 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| LAKE ISABEL SP | 001 | group standard nonelectric | 965 ft | $140 |
OpenStreetMap has no toilet mapped within 1 km of this campground, so no site here carries a toilet distance. That’s a gap in the map, not a finding about the campground.
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Ponderosa Group - Lake IsabelSan Isabel National Forest · 0.0 mi
St Charles Campground - Lake IsabelSan Isabel National Forest · 0.9 miPonderosa Group CampgroundSan Isabel National Forest · 0.9 mi
Southside Campground - Lake IsabelSan Isabel National Forest · 1.2 mi
La Vista Campground - Lake IsabelSan Isabel National Forest · 1.2 mi
Lake Isabel CabinSan Isabel National Forest · 1.3 miFrom Pueblo, drive 25 miles south on Interstate 25 to exit 74. Go west 18 miles on state Highway 165 and turn into the main entrance at the Lake Isabel Recreation Area. Drive to Forest Road 374 and turn left. The entrance to the group campground is beyond the St. Charles Campground entrance behind a closed gate.
The weather
the next four days
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Beulah Valley, CO
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
Spruce Group - Lake Isabel is in Colorado’s 7th congressional district. Its representative, Brittany Pettersen (D), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: A+. See every public-lands vote →