Pinnacles Campground

We stayed at cabin tent 81. It was clean and everything was in working order. Thank goodness it had electricity because it got cold and the heater fan they provided was amazing! The mattresses were thick and comfortable. Bring your sheets and sleeping bags. The cover on the mattress is a tarp material so not very comfortable so you’ll appreciate having the sheets.
It is close to the general store and the the bathroom are pretty close to the site. We explored the bear gulch area and parked in a spot close to the trailhead. It is far from the campsite, so I recommend driving to the trailhead, especially with kids.

The hiking was great, the pre-set up tent was clean and secured, however, the bathrooms were closed and super far away. No one knew why the bathrooms were closed. Also, in the morning, they close the access to the parking lots once they are full and the wesite said they had a shuttle service, but they actually do not, which was hard on my husbands hip to hike the 2 miles to just get to the base of the trailhead. They should update the website to reflect accurate information.

The staff are very friendly.

Campground was nice. Sites are mostly spread out, particularly in the back, and fairly private. Access to bathroom was not great, as nearest was an outhouse. As at many national parks, no showers except at the store is annoying.
Overall, nice camping here, but the park, as a national park is underwhelming. A small, not particularly interesting national park. Also, a Long way to get there from the north, and even longer to get ‘out’ to the south.

Well developed camp ground with showers and a camp store
Very expensive especially on the weekends - $125 for 2 nights and you can only book a minimum of 2 nights for the weekend

Despite paying and reserving a site our tent was removed in the late afternoon while we were hiking. upon returning from our hike, our tent was missing, in a panic we had begun to ask others if they had seen our tent. To which nearby campers told us that employees had removed it from our reserved spot. In 30° weather at 8 PM we had to scramble to find our tent, and the camp store was closed. And we all know there’s no cell reception in that campground. My device had been kicked off their Wi-Fi within a few minutes, so I was unable to use it to call for help. The only thing we could think of was to knock on doors of employees to track down the tent. We had to track down Ranger’s outside of the campground to search for employees to contact regarding where our tent was located. After nearly 2 hours in the cold, looking for our tent, the ranger tracked it down and it was found outside in their “storage area”.

There were several issues at play:

The employees did not check that we were registered at that site the next two days. Also, no sign was put on our marker to reserve the campsite when we had asked if we needed to do anything regarding, they said they would take care of it.

Fortunately, our tent was located before the temperatures dropped too low. Otherwise, it could’ve been a dangerous situation with no way to call for help or get warm after a long day of hiking in the park and 30 degree temperatures at night.

Both bathrooms were closed in our camp area. Requiring up to walk down to the next camp are to use there’s.

It would have been nice to know the bathrooms were out of order before we even booked the cabin sites. I definitely would have found another camp area.

Campsite was smaller than expected, but everything was nice! It is a little far from the bench trailhead (~1.2 miles), but we had a gorgeous hike.

The ADA toilet trailer was out of order (both stalls). The site did have an ADA portapotty (one) near the bathroom buildings, but the way they were dropped was in the dirt/sand (difficult for wheelchairs to traverse. This portapotty was not lit at night like the bathrooms, and they were placed in the dirt in such a way that opening the door fully was a challenge because it jutted up against the parking barrier.

The campground is kept very well and the people that work in the park are always friendly and very knowledgeable. Of course seeing both sides of the park is wonderful, whether hiking it or driving.