Dalton Canyon Dispersed Camping

I stayed for one night the third week in September 2023. It worked for what I needed. Since it was the middle of the week it wasn’t very crowded but I could see it getting crowded very easily. It’s pretty small. There were two campers there and one ran a generator all night. There’s very large dips in the road coming in (not sure about out, I went in/out the same way because I didn’t want to drive through the mud). It’s also right next to the road so if there’s a lot of traffic it could get loud.

I didn’t end up staying because it was very crowded and it was my first night dispersed camping, so pat of that was probably nerves. The road was muddy when I went through with big puddles and big rains - I drive a Honda fit and I shouldn’t have driven it in there - at least not to the end of the road. The front part was OK but that’s where it was most crowded (I saw at least a dozen vehicles in the front area alone, packed close together). I have AT&T as a carrier, and my phone said I had one bar until I tried to send text messages or call anyone and that’s when my phone switched over to “no service”.

So, here’s the scoop on this place. There are two areas on Dalton Canyon Road where dispersed camping is allowed. There’s a big flat area immediately off of Hwy 63, and an area at the top of the road, above where the GPS point is on this listing.

The first area, right off the highway, is where we overnighted. It’s a large, flat area, with space for half a dozen or more campsites. On a weeknight in early May, we were the only ones there. The area doesn’t have much to recommend it, other than proximity to the day use areas where people were pulling out some honkin’ big trout. It’s not particularly attractive, and filled with trash. mostly glass and fishhooks.

We couldn’t get to the upper area, which, according to the forest service MVUM map, is on a side road starting about 3.5 miles above Hwy 63. The MVUM lists Dalton Canyon Road (or forest road 123, in forest service speak) as a “seasonal” road, and the season starts in Mid-May. There were passenger cars going up and down the road (there are houses up at the top), but we walked about a mile of the road (the canyon is gorgeous, btw), and it was in bad enough shape that we weren’t about to take our class C motorhome on it. I assume that sometime right before the start of the “season” they’ll take a grader to it, and we were probably just a week or two early.

If you’re tent camping, there are 3 or 4 very nice looking sites just past the cattle guard on the left after the big flat area, next to the creek. But there’s no place to park a car, so you would need to park in the flat area and hike in a couple hundred yards.

The closest cell service is at the monastery, 5.5 miles south, near town.