Sahara Creek Horse Camp

Easy in and out with our 35’ fifth wheel. About 10 miles from the entrance to Mt. Rainier NP. Big shaded sites so no solar but generators are allowed. Basically no cell coverage.

We used this as our home base when visiting the park. Easy drive in and out. If you need cell service take a right out of the campground, drive a few miles to “Recycled Spirits of Iron” to get 3-4 bars of Verizon.

Discover Pass Required.

No usable Verizon data - constant drops and very high latency >1200ms. Only a trickle of AT&T. TMobile was better at 73 Mbps download and 4 upload. Verizon and T-Mobile with a roof mounted Pepwave antenna, ATT via smartphone. Our site was densely wooded so it was poor for both Starlink and solar. This was the case for most, if not all, sites.

We arrived on a Sunday afternoon and there were maybe 3 people here. There are sites saved for horse trailers and some general use sites. You have to email to request availability/reservations.

The reservation process is awkward and unwieldy. The entire row next to the site we were put in are all at right angles to the single lane road and ours was 3.5 degrees off level front to back (i.e. all of the jack plus levelling blocks needed to get there). It was barely long enough for us with the truck parked parallel to the road.

As others noted, there is a shooting range north of the park and you'll be able to hear it if anyone is using it. There's road noise on top of that.

Propane refill is available 5 minutes down the road at the gas station

Sahara Creek Campground/Sahara Creek Horse Camp (I’ve seen it referred to both)
Elbe, Washington
Dry Camping
Free (with a Washington state Discover Pass $30/year)
Limit 7 days in 30 day period.
Site #25

This is a free FCFS (with a Washington State Discover Pass) campground located approximately 8 miles from the Nisqually entrance at Mount Rainier National Park. Just spent 4 nights here. Got here on a Friday afternoon and there were multiple open sites. Campground was never full throughout my stay.

Campground near the highway, roads and sites are gravel. Road noise was not an issue, but there is a nearby shooting range that provides its share of noise. Plenty of trees and grass throughout the campground. Overall, trees were not an issue with roads and most sites. Our site did have one low hanging branch that we needed to navigate getting RV in and out of site. Sites are plenty large and there is decent space between sites. Sites come with a picnic table and fire ring. There are vault toilets on premises. Not much sun in majority of the sites. Site 11 would be the best for solar, but it is one reserved for horse camping Monday-Friday.

There are 29 sites. Some are pull through, while others are back in. Sites 11-20 have signs up indicating RESERVED FOR
HORSE CAMPING MON-FRI UNTIL 8 P.M. THEN OPEN TO OTHERS. Saw one horse trailer on the weekend and they just spent the day and left. There was definitely some horse poop and hay located around the park.

Zero Verizon signal in the campground. Did get one bar and a text came through when I walked out near the highway. Would definitely stay again.

I stayed here with my dog for a few nights. I work remote so this was a great spot to set up and relax - cell reception with t-mobile was great 5g I could even take video calls. We showed up on a Monday so there were only a few other campers. The grassy area in the middle is great for lounging, throwing a ball, and getting some sun. There are some horse trails around which made for great daytime hiking.

The negatives:
1. Horse poop everywhere, I mean everywhere, and it smells like a farm. After all it is a horse loop. And honestly it is not very off-putting, you get used to it plus it's nice to see horses around.
2. The gun range (as you might have read in other reviews) is close and it is pretty loud. This was the biggest negative for me. It is pretty consistent starting around 3pm and is an unregulated range so folks bring normal sounding guns to serious weapons like automatics (super fast) and very loud almost bomb sounding things. A couple were so loud that my poor pup was freaked out and hid under the trailer :(

I'd probably come back since it was mostly peaceful and free. But probably just for a night, maybe two.

We arrived on a Friday in the evening and there were only a couple spots left. During the week it was pretty much empty the whole time. We left on a Friday afternoon and there still weren’t many people at all. I’d say you’d probably have no trouble finding a spot if you arrived any time during the week or even up until mid afternoon on a Friday.

All spots are big rig friendly, some pull through and some back in. Definitely not much solar in any of the spots so had to run the generator frequently. There are some spots that are more sunny if you park in a certain way. Also there’s another loop other than the main loop with spots 1-7 (just go through the yellow gate area to the left when you first pull in).

The stay limit is 7 days and you need a discover pass. We also stayed in a “horse reserved spot” the whole time but no one really seemed to be around to enforce that. Also you could probably get away with staying longer than the 7 days since it was so quiet and no one was keeping track (that I saw).

For cell service we had super fast and reliable T-mobile for working remotely. Interestingly, our T-Mobile hotspot device was showing internet speeds of over 100mbs for download and then my phone was showing speeds of averaging around 13mbs. Either way it was perfectly capable for working full time. Verizon had zero device, not even voice.

Location is also great. Only about 15 minutes to mount Rainier. The closest grocery stores are mostly just convenient stores or gas stations but there an actual grocery store about 25 minutes away.

Need a discover pass to stay here, although nobody ever came around and checked for them. Tons of spots and each one has fire pit and picnic table. Several vault toilets too which were nice. We came in mid-week in June and there were maybe 7 other campers here (mainly people with horses). There’s about 30 spots of all various sizes. Big-rig friendly for sure.

Stayed here 2 nights. Gorgeous area. Insanely quite with ONE exception- there’s a shooting range less than a mile away- and it appears it’s open 24hrs, cause I heard gun shots from 10:30pm till about 11:15pm. It’s loud enough to hear, but you can tell it’s a ways away. At first it didn’t make me feel very comfortable, but when I learned it’s a shooting range- and not just a bunch of people drunk in the woods shooting guns wherever they want- i felt a little better. But this area has lots of spots, fire rings and tables at each. Pit toilets also on site. This is a pack in-pack out area. No trash cans anywhere. Most of the sites are reserved for equestrian trailers, but honestly- this campsite was about 95% empty, so I’m sure you could take one of those spots and wouldn’t be an issue. It’s surrounded by trees, so zero hope of charging your solar. This would accommodate any rig, but probably not a Class A too well. Road coming in is double in literally any car. I got intermittent internet on TMobile, ranging from 1bar LTE to 2bars 5G. But surfing was fine, streaming was fine and even took a FaceTime call. Zero service Verizon though. This has been one of my favorite sites. Pristine (no garbage), quite and hardly any people. The shooting range was it’s only drawback. About 15mins from Mt Rainier entrance. You will need a Discover pass to stay here. WA requires it for most of their campsites. you can get one here: discoverpass.wa.gov. $100 fine if your caught without the pass.

We found free camping near Mt Rainier National Park at Sahara Creek with a Discover Pass. Just 8 miles from the Nisquallly Entrance to Mt Rainier National Park, the Sahara Creek Camping Area offers free camping with the Washington State Discover Pass. In this video, I provide a walking tour of the Sahara Creek free camping area. The Sahara Creek Camping Area is located within the Elbe Hills State Forest, is big rig friendly and has multiple vault toilets. Trash is pack it in, pack it out. AT&T cellular service clocked in at 9.92 Mbps download speed and 2.46 Mbps upload speed. T-Mobile cellular service clocked in at 55.5 Mbps download speed and 0.60 Mbps upload speed. There was no Verizon cellular service at this location.