Lake Creek Road Dispersed Camping

In collaboration with Idaho Fish and Game, the Sawtooth National Recreation Area is closing all dispersed camping sites along the North Fork Road in response to increased bear activity until further notice.

These closures aim to protect the public because food storage and garbage collection is more difficult to manage in dispersed camping sites. Trailheads and developed campgrounds in the area are still open.

The Sawtooth National Forest is working with Idaho Fish and Game to investigate the bear or bears attracted to these sites.

Bears possess an extremely keen sense of smell and can find food from great distances. Once a bear finds food near humans, it is likely to come back. The result is a dangerous situation for both the bear and for people.

For more information, please contact the Sawtooth National Recreation Area at 208-727-5000.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/sawtooth/news-events/?cid=FSEPRD1047213

We are full timer and the AT&T signal was great around 40mb download.

The Road is very long going in and originally camped in the back because of the "3" day limit in the front.

We ended up moving towards the front because no-one ever came back to check and spent 6 days near the front of the road which gets longer sunlight hours because its not back in the valley.

Easy road for our 30’ travel trailer to navigate. Closer to the road is 3 day and further is 16 day camping (we saw forest service checking). Nice view of the mountains, lots of spread out spots, and easy road to go into town. There is quite a bit of traffic on the road due to hunting season which can make it a lil dusty, but never woke us up or bothered us. Good service with Verizon & ATT. Would stay there again. It was getting close to freezing at night, so be prepared for that.

Located just north of Ketchum this is a beautiful site to stay when visiting the area. The first few sites are 3 days only but about a mile down the road it opens up to 16 day stays. And the best sites - with strong WiFi are there.

We stayed at a site about 4 miles in from Hwy 75. It was right next to Lake Creek and we sat outside listing to the peaceful sound of the creek flowing past.

The roads are fine until about 7 miles in then they get a bit more rugged. We use solar and the hills around did restrict our intake of sun - but the generator running for about an hour in the morning and evening made up for that.

We will be back,

One first drives past a neighborhood before heading up the FS road. The first mile had a 3 day stay limit. That is where we camped at about the sixth or seventh spot. T-Mobile service was pretty poor but at least text finally were sent/ received.
We rode our bikes on up the road and the cellphone reception improved to T-Mobile 4g 3 bars. Must be something about the topography. There are no trees and it can be a bit windy. Good separation between sites. Road seems passable for about 2.5 miles. After that it turns into a 4 wheeler trail for perhaps the next 20 miles

for the 16 day stay you need to keep heading past the 2 airstreams that look to be abandoned there. of course they’re in one of the best spots in the campground haven’t seen a soul there in 2 weeks. seems to be a thing here, that folks drop off their rigs to store there. in the best spots. it will be dusty. cars traveling through do so at such a high speed that it just plumes dust. weekend warriors come here to fish and leave the lakes trashed. i did have 4 bars of tmobile LTE so that was a plus. the road is super easy for all kinds of vehicles. no washboard. never saw a park ranger even after calling them about the abandoned rigs and gunshots. the creek is nice to cool off in. cant swim in the lakes. pretty mucky and lots of fisherman all times of the week. pit toilet at the turn around, where of course weekend warriors trashed with their garbage. i packed it out. lots of bugs all times of the day. no mosquitos. heard kids finding snakes down by the lakes. groundhogs/squirrels everywhere for dogs to hunt.

As soon as you enter the gravel road portion you start seeing sites for camping. They are a variety of different sizes to accommodate all types of rigs. We have a 36’ Class A and we found a nice spot. The gravel road is a lot of washboard so take it slow. Road goes in maybe 4 miles but degrades considerably as you get further in. We did see 25-28 foot travel trailers back at the end though. Internet worked great with Verizon.