Campo Alto Campground

Campo Alto is a small campground with 17 individual and 2 group sites with an 8 mile 2 lane route from the main road up to flat mountain top. Roads entirely paved with mostly gravel unlevel parking near sites. Easily traveled by Class B rigs or trailers if enough power for steep inclines. Most sites can handle unlimited length but may not get large rigs leveled. My 30ft class C was fine. Had 2 clean lit vault toilet buildings of 2 stalls.  Only text messages randomly worked. 

Two objections discussed with service personnel. An arrow painted at end of road up at stop sign was demonstrated one way road. It was on the wrong spot, so ignore since most of the sites are to the right. The other serious issue was the large population of cut dead trees laying on the mountain top. A service came up 2 years ago to thin the area but didn’t bother to pick up logs leaving beetles and potential fire more fuel to consume and spread. A disaster waiting for either problem.(Had to help clear private property of down trees since city told us the beetle would spread further.)

It also would be profitable to cut or trim trees to make available the 4 sites closed. Not economical to  keep them closed - not to mention the demand for camping.

A great campground if you truly want to get away. This campground doesn't have much to offer in the sense of amenities but if you're looking for peace, quiet and few people then this is the spot. Higher elevation so cooler temps, beautiful views, spots spaced far apart and new vault toilets. We've been here twice, both times were over 4th of July weekends. It was nice to be away from crowds and full campgrounds during a popular holiday weekend. Temps were not too hot and not too cold. Camp host resides at another nearby campground but drives around Campo Alto every morning. They will charge you $10 for extra vehicles on site. We shared sites 9 an 10 with our friends. Those sites are perfect for friends and/or families to share. They are connected to each other and separated with a short driveway off the main campground road. Highly recommend if you enjoy serene and primitive camping.

We found campo alto after a forced evacuation cut our yearly Big Sur trip short after 3 days this August.

We’d booked 9 days so we had a lot of time remaining and weren’t prepared to head back to San Diego just yet & trying to find a walk-in campground during COVID made it all the more challenging. After reading some reviews we drove the 4 hours with our fingers crossed hoping to find a spot. Thankfully we arrived around 8:30pm and found walk-on site 17!

We set up for the night using our headlights and awoke the next morning in awe at how HUGE many sites are (including ours) and the utterly breathtaking beauty and quiet that surrounded us!

•PROS•

There’s an old ski lodge at the entrance thats an unexpected find & its forgotten beauty is haunting...if you keep an eye out you’ll see ski life strapping still in many of the trees.

The surrounding forest allows for plenty of hiking opportunities either long or short depending on what you feel up to.

Town is just a 15 minute drive down the mountain & has a store with nearly anything you could need.

You may get 1-2 bars of cell service if needed. I struggled to keep a single bar no matter where I walked too & found it better to stop at one of the pull-off areas halfway down the mountain for full service.

•CONS•

-There’s a large fly & bee population.

Our dog had a healing injury on her back knee that was nearly impossible to keep a bandaged. This quickly became a nightmare...our only option was to re-wrap with new gauze & vet wrap every few hours and put puppy pajamas on her in the evening in attempt to keep wrap up.

I wasn’t too bothered by them but the Mr had a horrible time with them and the bees swarmed our dogs water & our hand water station. Leaving any uncovered water out for more than 2 minutes meant it was full of drowning bees.

-Lack of Shade: I highly recommend bringing a pop-up canopy & side walls for shade if going during the summer. Being hot and sticky with the large flies means you may be miserable sitting still.

-Trash: Its a full pack-out campground so you’ll need to keep trash packed up to take out with you.

Staying for a week meant we really needed to find a dumpster and spent an hour looking for something around town. Unfortunately due to the bear enclosures we didn’t have any luck.

Out of pure desperation we ended up using the dumpster found at the campground located at the bottom of the mountain road despite the surveillance warning signs :-/.

•OVERALL•

We not only found this campground to be peaceful and stunningly beautiful but loved that its half the length of time to get home compared to Big Sur. We‘ll definitely be back soon!