Balsam Mountain Campground

We Camped here in Mid September. Very clean campground. Has no hookups. Was very peaceful and quiet. Stayed alot cooler seeing as how its one of the highest points in the Smokies. Lots of Elk sightings on the way to the campground. Camp sites are kind of small. There is no backing in with a rv. You simply pull off to the side of the road at the designated sites. Half of the sites are tent only camping. Will be going back this year.

23’ Retro trailer 4 door Tundra,
Very tight squeeze as parking is just parallel to road. Our fire ring and picnic area down steep slope. But...beautiful boondocking spot. There is a water fill at camp host site they will share to fill tank

5300 ft elevation makes this a desirable choice for summer camping Lots of tent sites and a few Rv sites 24 ft limit Rained first two nites but sun prevailed later Host Wayne is awesome and very helpful

Campground hosts were very friendly. There are no pull or back-in sites, you literally are parked on the side of the road. Campground is in a secluded area of the National Park, took about 20 mins to travel to the main park road. Would stay again.

At 5300 feet, Balsam Mountain CG is the highest elevation campground in Smoky Mountain NP. This is a small, busy campground with a camp host. There are no FCFS sites, reservation only. The campground road follows the narrow ridge line with almost all parking parallel to the road. The sites are a combination of RV/tent, RV only, and tent only. Tent pads and picnic tables are accessed from the road. We were in site 43, the first site on the right when you enter the campground; so, all traffic in and out of the campground passed our site. It was a bit of a pain to navigate down five stone steps to our "sitting area" but it was out of sight of the road and gave us some privacy. Farther into the campground, past the camp host, it feels a little congested.

IF YOU ARE IN AN RV AND YOUR CLEARANCE IS HIGHER THEN 10', then you MUST access Balsam Mountain Road from Highway 19. This route puts you on the Blue Ridge Parkway a few miles (3 or so) north of the CG. You drive south and make a right onto Balsam Mountain Road. If you attempt to access the CG by driving north on the BRP and plan to make a left onto Balsam Mtn Rd, you will have to turn around to avoid the two lowest tunnels on the entire parkway: one is 10' and one is 11'1".

The campground road is narrow and when vehicles and RVs are camped on both sides of the street, it creates a narrow one lane road. We are in a truck camper that has a small slide on the drivers side and made sure to have our reflective roadside triangles in place.

Verizon coverage from site 43: varied from 2.60 mps to 16 mps download. 50 mps upload.

Despite some of the negatives, this is a nice campground in a beautiful area. Due to the trees, there are only limited views from the CG.