Silver Lake East Campground

Just got home from camping here, and I must admit it was one of the best weekends we’ve had. There was nothing fancy about it, just you/​family, your tent, and nature at its prettiest. Reservations were simple completed the process in less than 5 minutes, but the lady below is right you dont know much about the site you picked until you get there, which we found exciting. They did however note when you «hovered» above a campsite on the their website map, which ones were fully shaded, and which ones were partially shaded so maybe they updated it. There were quite a few nice empty sites around so first comes aren’t that bad of an option. The camp hosts really made it all the better. Our family wasn’t quite what you would usually see out there in some ways but they never showed any judgement at all like some folks in some stores nearby. They welcomed us with big smiles, helped us with any questions we had and even lent us their skillet because we forgot to bring a pan! Thanks and much appreciation to them (wish I remembered their names). Silver Lake and Kit Carson Lodge which is right alongside the lake is a short 5 minutes away by car not sure how many by hike guessing around 10, 20 minutes. You could rent motor boats and canoes at the Kit Carson Lodge where they also have a general store. You can swim, (if you dont mind cold water) fish, and boat there. Theirs also a couple hiking trails nearby down the roads. Vault toilets, no showers, and drinking water lines were broken while we were there but we were told they should be fixed.soon. Bears do frequent the area so. food must be disposed of! Bear boxes are provided on most sites to lock your food away. Nights are very cold, and being 7,000+ the winds were woooo powerful. I hope this helps, I couldn’t find much about these campgrounds when looking it up so I decided id let others know a little more about it. Good luck!

Not to be confused with Plasse resort on the South side of Silver Lake, this place is a National Forest campground, pit toilets, no showers. I liked the location with easy walk to lovely Silver Lake. Sites are very large and spread out. Quiet at night. My big beef is with the reservation system which is outsourced to a private company. Only a limited number of sites are available for online reservation. The rest are first-​come, first serve. The problem is that you can’t really tell much about the site you are reserving online, except a simple map of location within campground. The site we reserved was in full sun, which was terrible in the middle of August. We saw that there were many available sites and naturally, we wanted to swap. The campground host told us there would be a $ 10 fee and we would forfeit the first night’s fee as well. What? That’s ridiculous. So we actually ate the cost and just paid for a different site. We joked that we could «sublet» our previous site if there came along a desperate campsite seeker late at night… alas, such musings were just fun campfire talk. Go mid-​week, don’t reserve ahead of time would be my advice. Take your chances to enjoy a fabulous lake and a peaceful campground.