Seven Devils Campground

The campground itself is wild and remarkable with unique sites and a short walk to a lake under towering cliffs. Beautiful and serene. We had sun and hail within a short timeframe. We have a 25’ bus and driving the campground loop scraped branches a few times. One rutted spot was a bit of a slow point. Only one other couple camping when we were there.

Access however is via a long, steep, corrugated unsealed road that challenged our 2003 vehicle going 15mph for almost an hour both up and down. At numerous points we considered turning back before the engine overheated, but it somehow survived.

From the eventual saddle, there’s a very narrow and pot-holed road with a death-slope on the side that is a careful drive but that stretch isn’t overly long.

I would absolutely recommend the spot for smaller and newer vehicles but anything older or longer might find the road up too costly or traumatic.

As others have said, a long rig can camp short of the actual campground if they want to visit the area, suffer the road up, but can’t fit in the spots or drive the loop.

This is an incredible area to visit, but is not for those afraid of heights or with vertigo. I was a little leery myself after reading all the material in preparation for the trip, but since it was on our bucket list of tent camping spots to visit with our Jeep, we were going! The turn off is just south of Riggins off the main hwy and easily marked. The first few files are paved, with intermittent cattle guards. Once the road becomes gravel, it's a pretty good road and can easily be traveled on with a good passenger car. As you near the top, the last few miles become narrower and a little more rougher as in more rocks, but that's about it. You definitely need to pay attention because some of the areas are narrow if you encounter another vehicle, but there are some pullouts (narrow, but room enough to get over).

Once you crest the top, the view is incredible! At the top of the saddle the road splits. To the left is the road to the Windy Saddle Lookout. This road starts out fairly wide, but becomes steeper and narrower to the top. At the top, just below the lookout is a parking lot with a nice pit toilet. From up here you can look out over the Hells Canyon area. It's amazing. Also on the road to Windy Saddle is the Windy Saddle Campground. We drove through to check it out. To our shock there was a fifth wheel, a motorhome, and a travel trailer in the campground. As fifth wheel owners, we would not drive the Seven Devils Road with it but it didn't seem to stop others and there were two horse trailers up here too. Each site has a nice table and fire ring and is out in the open, not really any trees due to the wind up there. There's also a nice pit toilet.

If you continue past the turn off to Windy Saddle Lookout and campground, there's a trailhead on your right with ample parking. When we were there, the first weekend in August, the trailhead was full and people were parking off the main road. The road to the Seven Devils CG is narrow as well and pretty much one way. We had to back out for a pickup camper coming out.

Each site at the campground is unmarked. Some have fire rings and some don't. The first site only had a fire ring, the second had neither a ring or table. We stayed in the third site with both a ring and table, the fourth site only had a ring. There were about ten sites in all, with some being wide, others short and one of the sites was hidden from the main road but you could see it from the trail to the lake. This one had both a table, fire ring, and spot for a tent. My only complaint was that there were a lot of downed trees everywhere. Probably due to the location and resulting weather, but there would be more room throughout if the FS cleared it out.

We got there around noon on a Saturday and there were only two sites left. I would recommend arriving there on a Friday or early on a Saturday if you're going up on the weekend.

Definitely worth the drive and experience. There were a lot of Gray Jay's in camp. We saw a mountain sheep on the cliffs above the lake and saw deer and an elk coming back down the next day.

The return trip is a little more treacherous due to the steep descent in spots. We have a Jeep that is all time 4 wheel drive and we had to put it in 1st in spots, so be aware of that.

We have Verizon and got coverage at the Windy Ridge Lookout parking lot only.

I absolutely loved this campsite! If I wasn't needing better cell service, I would have stayed much longer than one night!

This is a very primitive campground nestled right into the Seven Devils Mountains. It's a short drive up to Heavens Gate for an amazing view of Hells Canyon (recommended 4WD/decent clearance, but I imagine most cars could make it going slow; don't take my word for it): further, a walk to the lookout up there is amazing views all around! The campground itself doesn't have the most amazing views, save for looking up at the mountains. It's totally worth it, though! There's plenty of trails, including some intersecting directly across the campground.

Larger rigs are definitely going to want to beware. If you're towing, I would suggest unhitching and scoping out the campground before trying to make it in here and figure out whether you can do it. I did see a large trailer camped out in the horse staging area that is pretty clearly marked on the way in; you should be able to get there pretty easily, if nothing else, and it has most of the same benefits anyway.

There's not really any marked spots, and even the billboard at the start of the campground hardly looks like that of a normal campground. This feels like boondocking, except you have tables, metal fire rings, and vault toilets. Not even all of the spots you can camp at have tables or fire rings, though. The spots with the tables and fire rings are most likely to be level, although not guaranteed at all. The spot I chose was pretty poor quality, but there was a fire ring and I was able to get level. Great spot for hammocking, though!!

There is far more shade than sunlight in the campground itself. There's plenty of sunlight if you go back up, though, including at the horse staging area. In this spot, the mountains and the trees both block out the sun almost entirely, at least for the times that I was there (I wasn't there in the middle of the afternoon, having only stayed one night).

Verizon reception is basically not there at all. I got some extremely spotty 3G with a booster right at the entrance. That's about it. Nothing on my TMobile phone. However, you can get some pretty solid Verizon LTE up at Heavens Gate, and possibly at the parking areas and horse staging area before that. In other words, you could really get the best of both worlds, if you're willing to move back and forth (it's really not far at all; setup and tear down would be the only negative of doing it this way).

I didn't take many pictures, unfortunately. I was mostly just in and out. It's a beautiful campground, and I totally recommend it!