Best Tent Camping near Yellow Pine, ID

This is a pretty quiet place! It about an hour drive/17 miles from Cascade on a paved road. True to it's name, the lake and campsite are right on a summit! The lake is pretty small and a little muddy, but a fun dip nevertheless. It's about a 5 minute hike from the campsites. There are 3 campsites at the campground and they are all first come first serve! Dispersed camping is allowed in the area as well. Managed to find 2 empty spots here on Labor Day weekend, which was a real treat! The sites all have fire rings and picnic tables and share a vault toilet. The sites are well spaced and there little noise carries around the area. The campground is a little close the to highway (Warm Lake Rd) but traffic at night is pretty low, so the noise isn't bad. There is a wilderness airstrip not too far off, so some plane noise as well! Otherwise, a nice spot with some great views of the night sky.

Trap Creek Campground was great for our group. There are 3 separate fire rings, each with a picnic table, a clean vault toilet, and an amazing view of the adjacent meadow with the Sawtooths. There was plenty of room for large family tents and plenty of shade to let the kids run around and play. It is RIGHT off the highway, so if noise from traffic isn't your favorite, you'll want to choose another campground. There were also quite a few cars that stopped off the highway to use the toilet. Other than that, it was great for our group of families with dogs and kids.

We have high expectations since we’ve been at so many places, so please bear that in mind when reading this.

1. Only vault toilets and water spigots placed randomly around.
2. No electric/water hook ups, flushing toilets, or showers
3. Outside of one vault toilet building some animal made a nest above out of dirt where they continually poop out of that looks like it hasn’t been touched in months so when you go to use the restroom you walk by a giant pile of poop.
4. Pea gravel pads where they encourage you put your tent, not bad if you have a blow up mattress. It is nicely raked upon arrival.
5. Campsite was clean.
6. Most sites had trees, but not all so definitely check site pictures online if you need shade.
7. Most sites have a view of the lake, since it’s almost like a peninsula campground.
8. Nice boat ramps and lots of parking for boaters to leave trucks and trailers.
9. Bugs would get a bit crazy at random times of day depending on weather.
10. 20 minutes south of McCall if you wanted to get out and see a quaint little town.
11. Cows on opposite side of water from campground; you can hear them, but not smell them.

The fir trees stand tall and still. I can’t figure out if they are waiting for something to happen or if they simply don’t care.

If you’re looking for sone sort of gorgeous panorama, this might not be the place for you. It’s really just a small meadow in the mountains that the BLM put a vault toilet and a couple of fire rings in. That being said, this place is beautiful.

You can’t see rapid creek from the campground but you can hear it. And that’s really just as good. The white noise from the creek matched with the occasional bird or other nature sound is one of the most relaxing things on the planet.

It’s high enough in elevation that this place gets nippy at night. I stayed in early August and the temps dropped into the upper 30s at night.

The campground is well maintained and the vault toilet was reasonably clean when I arrived. It became Kevin clean shortly after I set up camp.

There are trails from both sites near the vault toilet that lead down to Rapid Creek.

I never saw any bear scat but signs on the property warn of them so be smart with your food.

All in all, Rapid Creek dispersed camping is excellent if you just want a quiet place where no one is around. It’s amazing but not for the reasons people usually like in my opinion. ◦