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4.6
8 votes

Heaton Bay Campground

Dillon Dam Road, Frisco, Colorado 80443 USA

  • Independent
  • Pet Friendly
  • Not Wheelchair
    Accessible
  • Public
    Restrooms
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“perfect for relaxing in White River National Forest”

Heaton Bay Campground is situated at an elevation of 9,000 feet and centrally located for recreation and relaxation in the White River National Forest. There is little or no shade in the campground due to pine beetle infestation and the removal of hazard trees, but the sites offer open views to Dillon Reservoir and several mountain ranges.  In the heart of the Rocky Mountains, the 2.3 million acre White River National Forest is a place of serenity and adventure, boasting 8 wilderness areas, 4 defined seasons, and 10 peaks surpassing 14,000 feet in elevation. Wildlife in the area abounds. Bighorn sheep navigate rocky ridges and bull elk bugle at dusk. Scenic rivers sustain populations of cutthroat, rainbow, and brown trout. Alpine regions provide habitat for pika and ptarmigan. These species, along with many others, depend on surrounding undeveloped wilderness, clean streams, and diverse forests to live.

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Reviews of Heaton Bay Campground

37 people have reviewed this location

Ratings Summary

4.8 Access
4.8 Location
4.9 Cleanliness
4.6 Site Quality
3.9 Noise

Cell Coverage

Verizon 4G/5G

Confirmed by 17 users | Last reported on September 19, 2022

AT&T 4G/5G

Confirmed by 10 users | Last reported on July 23, 2023

T-Mobile 4G/5G

Confirmed by 8 users | Last reported on September 05, 2023
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Reviewed by
JenniferGerhardt

  • 4 Reviews
  • 1 Helpful
June 06, 2017
Rated 3.0

Tent camped overnight. Clean campgrounds. Camp host were friendly. Vault toilets clean. Grounds were quiet. No view of water but beautiful view of the mountains while I drank my morning coffee, in a lawn chair.

1 person found this review helpful
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Reviewed by
Campendium

July 19, 2015
Rated

This NFS campground is on beautiful Lake Dillon with mountain views and abuts the extensive recreation (bike) path that goes all the way to Breckenridge, or Vail for the super athletes. We had water and electric hookups. Frisco, which you can easily ride your bike to is charming with fun restaurants. We had no reservations but the camp host was nice enough to look up the site of that family that left a day early. We were lucky and enjoyed a much needed bike ride after driving all day. So, what is there to complain about? The noise of routes 9 and 70 made hanging out outside unenjoyable. Maybe the E loop would be slightly quieter. Also the dump station is on the other side of town.

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This reviewer would stay here again

Nightly Rate: $26.00

Days Stayed: 1

Site Number: 35

5 Access
5 Location
5 Cleanliness
5 Site Quality
1 Noise

Cell Coverage Rating

Verizon 4G

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Reviewed by
Campendium

October 13, 2016
Rated

Whether one is on the road with a one night stay in mind or a week long vacation in Summit this is a centrally located base camp.

My stays have spanned a few years of diversified stays of one night to 12 nights with and without any reservations. It is wise to reserve here for the weekend.

Found staying in the bay quiet, enjoyed viewing osprey and walking the trails around the shore.

Hopefully we are blessed with Mike & Joy as camp hosts again next year.

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This reviewer would stay here again

Nightly Rate: $18.00

Days Stayed: 1

Site Number: -

4 Access
5 Location
5 Cleanliness
5 Site Quality
4 Noise

Cell Coverage Rating

Verizon 4G

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Reviewed by
Campendium

September 18, 2017
Rated

We stayed here for 2 weeks in September 2017. Campground is well situated between Dillon, Silverthorne, and Frisco, with Brekenridge close by too for great restaurants. All the shopping you can desire close by, and with a fantastic Whole Foods too! Amazing hiking and biking trails nearby, and you have the huge bay to boat around in. Simply fantastic!

Pros:
- Great campground - clean, quiet, spacious, with available water and 30A hookups, and friendly camp hosts.
- Centrally located location for great shopping, hiking, and biking.
- Amazing views all around.
- Great signal strength and Verizon speeds. -50dBm with Cradlepoint & Panorama combo.

Cons:
- Dump station is 15 minutes away, and can get busy as it's the only one around to service 7 or more local national forest campgrounds. 5$/dump

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This reviewer would stay here again

Nightly Rate: -

Days Stayed: 14

Site Number: C

5 Access
5 Location
5 Cleanliness
5 Site Quality
5 Noise

Cell Coverage Rating

Verizon 4G

T-Mobile 4G

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Reviewed by
Campendium

September 24, 2017
Rated

A very convenient place to camp near the bike path and the cute towns of Dillon, Silverthorne, and Frisco. We came in without reservations and could only get a site for a couple nights but while there I booked reservations at two more different sites so we had to move a few times. The sites were for the most part large, fairly level, and well spaced. We did not have hookups but there is a water fill station near the restroom (vault toilets), which was always clean and stocked. Some sites have views of the reservoir but ours had nice mountain views. It rained a lot while we were there so we appreciated being on concrete instead of dirt.
The one downside is that there is no dump station and the only one in the area now is at the Farmer's Korner water treatment facility about 4 miles away, and always busy. Also depending on which loop you are in there can be quite a bit of traffic noise.
We would definitely stay here again just for the access to the bike trail. It's a beautiful place to ride or walk.

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This reviewer would stay here again

Nightly Rate: $12.00

Days Stayed: 10

Site Number: -

5 Access
5 Location
5 Cleanliness
4 Site Quality
3 Noise

Cell Coverage Rating

Verizon 4G

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Reviewed by
Campendium

April 20, 2018
Rated

Not bad just pricey. Good spot if you wanna be in summit.

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This reviewer would stay here again

Nightly Rate: $26.00

Days Stayed: 7

Site Number: -

5 Access
5 Location
4 Cleanliness
4 Site Quality
3 Noise

Cell Coverage Rating

Verizon 4G

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Reviewed by
Campendium

May 14, 2018
Rated

Moose roaming thru the campground, access to Dillon Resoirvoir, electric , water and trash. I’m in paradise!

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This reviewer would stay here again

Nightly Rate: $26.00

Days Stayed: 7

Site Number: 7

5 Access
5 Location
5 Cleanliness
5 Site Quality
5 Noise

Cell Coverage Rating

T-Mobile 4G

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Reviewed by
Campendium

July 16, 2018
Rated

Campground was ok,, clean, quiet, no shade, in between to towns that have a lot to offer but there is ALOT of stuff happening,,traffic was bad, I can honestly say that the locals will drive around, over & thru you and not care,, worst drivers and traffic we had the WHOLE time we were in Colorado,,

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This reviewer would stay here again

Nightly Rate: $24.00

Days Stayed: 2

Site Number: 1

4 Access
4 Location
5 Cleanliness
4 Site Quality
4 Noise

Cell Coverage Rating

Verizon 4G

Reviewed by
marksalansky

  • 26 Reviews
  • 0 Helpful
August 23, 2018
Rated

We stayed at site C-27 from 5 – 12 August 2018.

Heaton Bay is great little Forest Service campground, but campers need to understand what this campground is all about before planning your trip.

This campground is situated along the shores of the Dillon Reservoir which positions it right in the middle of the three Colorado tourist towns of Dillon, Frisco and Silverthorne. There is no getting around the fact that there are a lot of people visiting these towns during every month of the year, so this is not the campground for you if you are looking isolated solitude.

Despite the crowded surroundings, this campground offers a lot of attractive features. The reservoir and surrounding peaks make for dramatic scenery and beautiful sunsets and sunrises. We spent hours fishing from the shore and had quite a bit of luck pulling in a variety of fish including plenty of rainbow and brown trout.

I have never been much of a bird watcher, but watching the Heron and Osprey pull fish from the reservoir was just fascinating.

Pedal in any direction for less than three miles on the paved bike paths and you will arrive in one of the three nearby tourist towns. The paths are mixed-use, so bikers, runners and walkers are all sharing the same patch of asphalt. Please be cautious and keep your speed under control.

The lake also offers quite a bit of on-water recreation opportunities as well. Paddle boarding sail boating and kayaking seemed to be the most popular activities while we were there, but there were also a few motorized boats on the water.

For those of you that work from your RV, there is no campground provided WiFi, but the cellular service is phenomenal up here. We had 70 Mbps up and 9 Mbps down on unboosted Verizon; and 45 Mbps up and 5 Mbps down on unboosted AT&T. That is easily enough bandwidth to participate in video teleconferences if you cannot get completely away from work.

The campsites within the Heaton Bay Campground are well spaced and we did not feel like we were right on top of our neighbors. The Forest Service website for this location warns visitors that “there is no shade” and “all of the trees have been cut down due to beetle kill”. Neither of these statements are entirely true. There are still plenty of trees but most of them are less than 20-feet tall. And while you do not get shade from old growth canopy type trees, you do get directional shade from trees in the morning and afternoon depending upon the sun’s position. At our site, C-27, there were several of these 20-footers clumped around the campsite that produced shade for us during most of the day.

The campground is broken out into several loops with campsites in the C loop offering both water and electric hookups. The other loops do not offer either water or electric at the campsites, but do have shared water spigots. Generators are allowed in the non-powered loops and we heard many of them running during the day when walking through the campground. The camp host mentioned quiet hours, although I do not recall exactly what times of the day generator use is not allowed.

Each loop has a set of two vault toilets and they were kept very clean and fully stocked the entire time we were at the campground. There are no flush toilets, showers or designated fish cleaning stations in the campground.

Heaton Bay campground does not have a dump station, nor do any of the campsites offer sewer connections, but there are reportedly two different municipal dump stations available in the immediate area. We used the ‘Breckenridge Dump Station’ (https://www.campendium.com/breckenridge-rv-dump-station) which is only about 4 miles from Heaton Bay Campground. It cost $5 per dump and offers potable water to fill your tanks, but there is no water hookup specifically for flushing out your black tanks.

The campground was at capacity the entire time we were there so if you want to camp here, it would be wise to make reservations ahead of time at www.recreation.gov. We saw many disappointed campers circling the campground loops looking for vacancies only to eventually give up and move on to another campground.

Also I would like to pass along kudos to all of our neighbors at Heaton Bay during that week, because even though the campground was completely full, there were absolutely no issues with people being rude, loud or otherwise unpleasant to be around.

All in all, we had a very enjoyable time at Heaton Bay and will probably be back again when we are in the mood to camp around people. Nightly rate was $18.50 after taxes, reservation fees and Annual Pass Discounts.

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Nightly Rate: $18.00

Days Stayed: 7

Site Number: C-27

5 Access
4 Location
5 Cleanliness
5 Site Quality
5 Noise

Cell Coverage Rating

Verizon 4G

AT&T 4G

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Reviewed by
Campendium

November 08, 2018
Rated

This area is fantastic! Frisco is a great little town, I absolutely love it. Breckenridge and Silverthorne are very close by, as well as Vail and Denver is a couple of hours away. The campground... well, if you know me, you know I boondock 99% of the time. I really really wanted to stay here so I could visit friends in Breck. So, I was forced to stay in a campground if I wanted to visit.

It's fine. It's a campground. You have neighbors which invites generator noise, dogs barking, vehicles driving by, loud talking, rules, etc. Of course these things were present. The campground somehow did feel fairly 'away' from the city, which was nice. Some road noise, I pretty much tune it out. There was water available... not at my site- I didn't stay in the area that had power and water, but I wanted to, to avoid generators. I drove through the whole campground looking for a spot and it was full. I ONLY got lucky because there was ONE spot available that was a walk-in spot... it wasn't reservable online.

It's easy to get to, close to Frisco and Silverthorne, close to Wal Mart, and most everything you need.

Nice views of the lake can be found.

A fire broke out across the interstate while I was there. It was quickly contained. Neat to watch the helicopters come and go to the lake to get water to dump on it.

For a campground, it was good. I'll be back!

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Nightly Rate: $23.00

Days Stayed: 7

Site Number: ?

5 Access
5 Location
5 Cleanliness
5 Site Quality
3 Noise

Cell Coverage Rating

Verizon 4G

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Heaton Bay Campground

Dillon Dam Road
Frisco, Colorado
80443 USA
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  • Unavailable
    Parking
  • Check
    Pets Allowed
  • Check
    Restrooms
  • Unknown
    Wifi
  • Unavailable
    Wheelchair Accessible
  • Unknown
    Credit Cards Accepted
Affiliation
National forest
Check In
2:00 PM
Check Out
1:00 PM
Last Nightly Rate
26.0
Longest Vehicle Length Reported
40.0
Lowest Nightly Rate
2.0
Max Length
0
Max Stay
14
Sites Count
86
  • Check
    Paved Sites
  • Check
    Fifty Amp
  • Unavailable
    Full Hookup
  • Check
    Rec Facilities
  • Check
    Pull Through
  • Check
    Tent Sites
  • Unavailable
    Dump Station
  • Check
    Big Rigs
  • Check
    Open Seasonally
  • Unavailable
    Age Restricted
  • Check
    Boondock
  • Unavailable
    Cabin Sites
  • Unavailable
    Dispersed Sites
  • Unavailable
    Firewood
  • Unavailable
    Fulltime Residents
  • Unavailable
    Group Tent Sites
  • Unavailable
    Laundry
  • Unavailable
    Mobile Homes
  • Unavailable
    Permit Required
  • Check
    Potable Water
  • Unavailable
    Propane
  • Check
    Public Water
  • Check
    Pull Through RV Sites
  • Check
    Reservations
  • Unavailable
    Sewer Hookup
  • Unavailable
    Showers
  • Check
    Sites
  • Check
    Standard Tent Sites
  • Check
    Water Hookup
  • Unavailable
    Adult Only
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