Cold Springs Campground (CA)

.

This campsite is right next to the creek. Lovely sounds to fall asleep to!

This is a BEAUTIFUL campground. It’s extremely lush, has great tree-cover, and running water through it. It’s also conveniently located right next to the MK ranger station for anyone that has to pick up wilderness permits. The only thing I wish I’d known about beforehand was the 21-mile winding, single-lane road to get here. Somehow missed that it wasn’t off of the main park road. Regardless, this campsite was great and was a great place to stay before hiking down to Hockett Meadow for a couple nights.

Wonderful stay and great hikes. It hailed on one of hikes!

We noticed many reserved campsites ended up not bring occupied.

Convenient to MK’s all famous trailheads, quiet and clean, also if you need help or have question, the ranger station is almost right across the street. Good place to get acclimated to the long hike before start.

My first time camping in 27 years! The drive was long but worth it for its seclusion and beauty. Due to campfires being banned the air was clean and crisp. Although the temperature was higher than normal it was a lot cooler than down at the foothills. The fellow campers were all friendly and respected nature. We went to this location exclusively for the golden trout on the Kaweah river (more like a creek due to the drought). We were the only ones on the river and caught those elusive goldens and brookies. The entire campground was well maintained, clean near pristine condition considering. We did tarp my SUV while fishing at Mineral King but at the campground we didn’t need to. It was indeed a challenge trying to get a reservation. There were mosquitoes in the early mornings and evenings but with repellent and burning incense were we pretty protected. Definitely a beautiful place and trip!

First of all the ranger was so rude. As for the camp site it was the most awful camp ground we have ever stayed at. We camp out of our SUV and the camp site was not level at all. We had to run our vehicle up on rocks to get level enough to sleep that night. The picnic table and bear box was on a 90 degree hike up to them from the vehicle. Needless to say we paid for two nights and only stayed one night. We will never come back to this camp ground again.

The worst experience I had camping, there is not enough information on the website describing the sites, they are really small, at least the 2 sites where we stay #18 and #20 were on a hill full of rocks and trees, a very small space to place our tents, not a single 12"x12" of ground was flat, very small storage boxes and we couldn't use our own grill to cook or do camping fires, due to stage 3 for fires (I understand that part).

My uncle spent over $400 dollars in meats and shrimps that we couldn't cook at all, no burgers, or bbq's, nothing...
On top of that the ranger went by our sites every day 10:30am and 3:30pm on the dot, checking on us, also we couldn't have our coolers outside even if we were around, and we had a cooler difficult to move cause it was heavy.

At the end we had to leave one day early because we didn't want the uncooked meats and rest of the food to go bad because there was no ice, nor a place nearby to buy ice, I'm calling the park to get a refund for the day I didn't use on both sites.

H

Beautiful place