Best Dispersed Camping near Bitterroot National Forest

If a backpacking trip in to a wilderness area with a hot springs next to your campsite sounds like the perfect trip, then Stanley Hot Springs is for you.  Stanley Hot Springs located in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness is just under a 5 mile hike from the trail head located in the Wilderness Gateway Campground.  The trip in to the hot springs gains about 1500 feet, but the climb is worth it as you get to soak your tired legs after the hike. 

Plenty of campsites can be found around and near the Hot Springs.  Water can be filtered from the near by creek.  You are backpacking so be prepared to bring out everything you bring in.  You are also in Bear Territory so be prepared to hang your food in a tree and bring bear spray.

Getting to the hot springs can be a little tricky as their is no bridge over the creek, so you will have to ford the creek, unless you can find a series of log jams to cross on.  Best bet for finding you way is to ask someone hiking out for suggestions on crossing the creek.

The creek crossing will not be possible in the spring or during high water flows.   We managed an easy crossing over log jams in July, but others a week earlier forded the creek in waist deep water.

The area was clean during our visit, so please keep it that way.

From the highway 93 turn it is 4.6 miles to where we camped. The last 2.3 miles of the drive was on a fairly rough, but very manageable, forest road. (Mostly washboard and a few holes) It was 11.8 miles from our camp to Darby, and about 13 miles to the Yellowstone Ranch.

We grabbed a nice big spot right next to Lost Horse Creek late Friday afternoon. Another RV came into the area later in the evening and crowded us a little bit but we still had plenty of room to spread out. The road in is BUSY. We have camped at a number of dispersed locations over the years and this was BY FAR the busiest forest road we have seen. On Friday night we counted 50 cars passing by before we stopped counting. We drove west down the road a ways Saturday and saw a handful of other sites, but not enough to justify the traffic. We found out that “Twin Lakes” is about 20 miles down the rough forest road from our campsite. We didn’t venture that far as we could only go about 8-10 MPH max in our truck on the washboard road. Maybe we should have tried because it seemed to be quite the attraction given the traffic. This place will do in a pinch but if you are looking for a quiet dispersed camping area kept driving. This is not for you!

A ton of dispersed sites right near the creek, but poorly taken care of by campers. We encountered more trash here than we’ve ever seen camping before. I mean, full trash bags left behind that were of course then scavenged by wildlife and spread all over. We also found human poop and used toilet paper in multiple spots, even though there IS a toilet provided here! We found tampons too…it was seriously disgusting…and obviously a popular spot for burning pallets because we found handfuls of nails scattered around, so be mindful of your tires!! This area just seems to attract a different kind of camping crowd, one that doesn’t respect the land or keeping it clean and better than you found it. It was pretty unfortunate because it really is a pretty and overall peaceful area.