Lovely location in the mountains of Oregon. We drove a few thousand feet up a gravel road to get to this campsite. Easy access for my little sedan. I typed the latitude and longitude (found on the website) into my gps but lost service maybe 15 or 20 minutes before we arrived. Luckily it still was able to track our location and tell us “you have arrived” but as the campsite description said, these sites are spread out along the road, so it took us an extra 10 or 15 minutes to find the site we were going to stay at. The easiest campsites to find are at the trailhead of the North Fork Catharine Creek trail, which has a large parking lot with a minimal parking fee. The vault toilets are at this parking lot. For us, we crossed the bridge right before the parking lot and found a pull-off loop that had a few trailers with what seemed to be seasonal campers. They were cheerful and friendly. We went to the very back of the loop and found a nice secluded spot that was literally yards from the river. It was a primitive spot; it had no picnic table and only a fire ring made of rocks but since we had chairs we didn’t mind.

The forest floor was extremely easy to drive stakes into, and the river made a lovely background noise to fall asleep to.

The only thing I didn’t like was a couple bags of trash sitting on the side of the loop. We figured they were from the seasonal campers who put them at a distance so they didn’t have to deal with the smell. Not a great idea since an animal could get into it though. That’s something to keep in mind; THERE IS NO DUMPSTER so you have to pack all trash back out.

We stayed in the middle of July and it was delightfully cool, in the mid 70s during the day and dropped down to the upper 40s over night.

All in all a lovely overnight trip. I would go back.

This place is haunting and beautiful. Very dry, very much a sun-baked desert. The soil at the top of the bluffs was oddly soft and puffy, and I’m honestly not sure how they haven’t been destroyed by foot traffic and erosion. That aside, there isn’t a good path to all the various landmarks and monuments so I highly recommend getting a hiking map or downloading one before you get to the site. Other reviewers said they had service but once we left the paved highway we didn’t have any, and since I hadn’t downloaded the map, I wasn’t able to find the big hoodoo that I wanted to see.

There is a large flat area that is great for tents, and many of the campers who parked there went further into the actual badlands to camp on the hills.

The covered picnic area has three tables and a grill.

An interesting feature is a tiny stream of clear water that meanders around the picnic area, but leaves all the plants it touches covered in a crusty white stuff.

The website is accurate: campsites are primitive, there is at least one boat ramp, there are two islands when the water is high, and there are several picnic tables scattered over the islands.

The boat ramp we took was more than a half mile from the island. The turn-off from the highway wasn’t marked as a boat ramp, we just took the only road we could find that led down to the water. It’s a pebbly dirt road, and not great for small cars but we made it in my sedan. There were two or three primitive camp sites on the way down to the boat ramp that aren’t mentioned on the website, by the way. It took close to an hour for us to paddle over to the island, though admittedly we were not expert paddlers. The lake has a very slight current but it wasn’t a problem.

The website says that Yarnell is two islands when the lake is high and one when its low. Our visit was in late July of 2020 and the water was high at that point because there were two islands. The southern one is bigger and sticks up 30 or 40 feet out of the water. It’s got steep angled rock-cliffs on 3 sides but the north side has a sort of rocky beach where you can put your boat and there is a footpath that starts near there which winds all over the island and leads you to all the different campsites.

The campsites show that effort was made in establishing them in the past; each picnic table has a tent pad that is a pebbly area with the pebbles held in by squared logs. When I was there the sites were overgrown with weeds (I didn’t mind, I liked it). Many of the sites also had fire rings with cooking grills that could be rotated on or off the fire. The picnic tables were made of a sturdy concrete.

The smaller island is the one we stayed on because it was less overgrown and smaller (we didn’t want much of a climb with all our gear). There are o lot two campsites there and it is a lot more open. Since it’s primitive, the openness makes it a bit awkward when you need to find a place to “take care of your business” so to speak, especially when you’re trying to put it where the rain won’t wash it into the lake. There’s a couple spots that work, but it’s challenging. I assume it would be a lot easier on the big island.

The wildlife I saw was a variety of birds (including 2 bald eagles!) and some adorable but VERY bold round fat mice who explored our equipment and left little “presents” inside the boat. 💩 💩 We hung the rest of our food out of reach on a tree branch and had no problems with the mice getting into it. Also there were very small bees (or maybe wasps??) that were very insistent on swarming our tuna and I got stung twice. It wasn’t a problem for me, it was just a bit itchy. But fair warning.

At night, there are a few lights along the bank, but they don’t impede the view of the stars. The view of the stars was amazing. The Milky Way was bright and also I was able to see the comet that was passing by at the time.

There’s a great place to swim on the northern side of the small island that has a rocky shelf thigh deep in the water where you can hang out and stack rocks or jump off out into the deeper parts of the lake. The water surface is warm down to a couple feet (in July), and underneath is cold. I have very fond memories of the time I spent here and I hope to come back someday!