Best Dispersed Camping near Challis, ID

If you show up to Redfish Lake on a busy weekend and all of the campgrounds are reserved/full, no worries. There is a bunch of free dispersed camping all along highway 75. A quick stop at the Forest Service Office down the road and I had a pretty good map of the forest roads in the area, but more importantly, a tip about free camping a stone’s throw away from Redfish Lake and Sunny Gulch campground. The road in is a bit rough with ruts and rocks, but there are several established sites with fire rings. There was a loop to the right with about 8 such sites and a loop to the right with about 5 sites as well as one that was hidden behind the site I chose that you had to walk in to(it was actually a nicer site than the one I chose, but I was tired and set up before I saw it on my explorations. There was one vault toilet that was not especially clean, but free is free, and if you really wanted to, you could walk less than a quarter mile across to the developed Sunny Gulch campground. There are no picnic tables or grills or tent pads, but definitely stone fire rings at each site so no worries as long as you brought your own camp chair. If you need a shower, head into Redfish Lake to use the public pay showers there.

We came here second week of May just after the rangers opened FR-146. We travelled all the way to the end where there is a trailer turn-around. All sites looked nice and we counted 12 designated dispersed sites, #1 was the furthest in. We ended up in 2C(the furthest in of three sites of area #2. The site was next to the river. It was 4.5 miles in on the dirt road and our closest neighbor was back up the road 3.5 miles in camp Murdock, roughly a twenty minute drive. The only animals we saw were ground squirrels. It was so peaceful and a wonderful experience.

We are full-timers and have a 36 ft Class A with a Cherokee Trailhawk tow and had scouted the area before arriving with the RV. The roads in to this area, NF-563/Stanley Creek Rd and NF-633/Nip and Tuck Road are in pretty decent shape for all vehicles coming in from the West off of Hwy 21, but be warned, do not come in from the East on NF-633/Nip and Tuck Road off of Hwy 75 as just a short distance in, there is deep and narrow wash across the road that will likely ruin the underside of your RV unless you have a very high clearance vehicle. There are many dispersed sites around along the road, but most were taken when we arrived, and only a few facing Stanley have cell service. We found a decent site (44.2382,-114.9692), a little off of the main road, with a great view of the Sawtooth Range and the valley. The site sloped a bit from side to side, but we were able to get mostly level. There were a few flies around during the daytime, but not the biting kind, just annoying. Mosquitos were an issue only in the evenings. There are a number of hiking trails in the surrounding area. AT&T service was fair with 2-3 bars of LTE and speeds up to about 1.5 MB/s. T-Mobile service was good with 3 bars of 4G/LTE and speeds up to about 1.3 MB/s We were able to get DISH coverage on all three western satellites at our site. Also, there were no OTA channels to be had with our fixed omni antenna.