Whitewater Campsites - Resources for Planning Rafting Trips

Here you'll find photos of most of the campsites on more than 30 whitewater rivers and other resources to help you plan your rafting trips. See the About page for the story of how this website got started. This great resource has been made possible by the generous contributions of these fellow river runners who have helped me assemble this site for all of us to enjoy.

Have fun, and SYOTR!

Will Hansen

What's New...

Feb 03 2010 - Added new photos of Lodore Canyon thanks to Dennis Portillo
Jan 11 2010 - Added many new Lower Owyhee campsite and scenery photos from Jason Shappart. Thanks Jason!
Dec 02 2009 - Added new Desolation Canyon photos from DeLayne Landis (Flat Cyn, Above Bull, Rattlesnake). Thanks Delayne!
Nov 08 2009 - Added coverage of the Ruby-Horsethief section of the Colorado and more Westwater shots thanks to Mike Glasgow
Oct 10 2009 - A 'back to our roots' make-over to celebrate 5 years on the web and to generally simplify things

Note:

The ability to view these rivers and campsites in Google Earth has been moved to the new sister site: RaftingTheWest.com

To View The Campsites

Select a river from the list at the left to see the list of its campsites. Each campsite has its own photo album. So just click on any campsite name to see thumbnails of the photos in that campsite's album. Click on any thumbnail to see a larger picture. Click on that larger picture to see the original, full-resolution photograph.

Whitewater Campsites.com is a community effort. As you view the campsite pictures, feel free to contribute your own comments about the joys, features, or hazards of camping there, or suitability in low or high water conditions, hiking opportunities, or about rafting trips on that river in general. Comments can be entered for the campsite as a whole and for any individual photograph.

Campsite names are prefixed by the river mile so they appear in the order you encounter them on rafting trips.

Each river has separate albums containing photos of the river scenery, rapids, put-in and take-out facilities, and interesting features of the river that may influence your river trip logistics or campsite selection. These special albums are located at the bottom of each rivers campsite list.

Other Features

Many of the major permit rivers require that you reserve campsites. So you must plan ahead for which campsites you want, and consider daily mileages you intend to float each day as you choose your campsites. This river mileage calculator will help you do that.(requires Silverlight 2.0).
The Recommended Shuttles page provides links and phone numbers for the folks we use to shuttle our vehicles on various western rivers and reasons why.
The Rafting Trip Photos page presents collections of high-resolultion photos in DeepZoom.
Read about amazing river trips by your fellow river runners on the trip reports and river stories page.
Just like autos, rafts get hot-rodded too! Check out I pimped my raft!, a page full of cool rafts that I've come across in my river travels.
White water boaters get into, shall we say, interesting situations Here are a few entertaining ones.

Help Make Whitewater Campsites Better

I invite you to send photos and also make comments on the photos that are already here to help make Whitewater Campsites even better. If you have photos that show the character of white water rafting trip campsites, camping on river trips, or river scenery that you'd like to contribute to this site, just e-mail them to me at will.hansen@-v-.net. (Just substitute "verizon" into my e-mail address in place of "-v-".) High resolution photos in jpg format are best, and please be sure to note the river name, the river mile, and campsite name of each photo so I know where to post each one.

Other Campsite Websites

Campsite Photos of USA Campgrounds