Guanella Pass Campground

We were lucky to get site #5 on a Monday and stayed four nights. It's extremely private for a FCFS tent site as there was flowing streams on one side and wooded hills on the other side and behind. A beautiful site indeed with the adjacent streams providing background sound effects 24 hours/day. The other FCFS sites were nice enough but no comparison. Great hiking nearby - either to Silver Dollar Lake or the Bierstadt fourteener. Our camp host, Murph, was the best (June, 2023)! Super helpful and the campground area was extremely clean.

Guanella Pass is a Fee use campground provided by the USFS. A camp site Host is on site. It is a nice campground and has a level tent space, steel fire ring, separate cooking grill, and level parking space. It also has pit toilets. Because of the provided facilities, it is NOT a FREE campground.

There is NO dispersed camping on the Georgetown side of the Guanella Pass do to overuse. Former camping areas and blocked off and are now posted No Camping.

Dispersed camping is plentiful on the Grant side of the pass in. Continue down FSR 119 and the unmarked Buno Gulch Rd for plenty of nice dispersed camping sites.

Due to its proximity to Denver this area appears to have been heavily used and abused and now dispersed camping is only allowed in specifically marked sites (you'll see lots of previously used sites).

Sauntered into this rather out of the way glade between some lovely large mountains and with plenty of opportunity for shade, solar, or both all at once, to attend a "van gathering."

A van gathering is much like an RV rally but you have a van, there are more tattoos, less deodorant, and the smell of competition hangs heavily in the air.

No services, though it's not a terrible drive to the nearby campground to the north where you'll find out toilets. Service is absolutely not an option but at the bottom of the road in Grant there's decent signal. Taking the road to the north though is worth it. It runs switchback and steep through mountain meadows and big peak views. Maybe not the best road for larger RVs or trailers, but Georgetown at the end / convergence with the formidably daunting I-70 (aka the death of Colorado), is a cute little village with plenty of commerce in the form of outdoor gear, breakfast tacos and craft beers.

PS. Max length is not really 35' as this is a giant open space and though there are designated site numbers, you could back into a site and have a hundred feet or so to work with.