Agency-listedUSFSFeeRoad season: open (MVUM)
Little Bear
Drive-up · U.S. Forest Service · CO · 39.03456, -107.99795
Ask an AI about this campsiteOpens Grok already loaded with this site. It reads the same records this page is built from, and links whatever it tells you.
Ask about this camp →U.S. Forest Service lists this as a developed campground. Expect marked sites, a fee station or a reservation, and the usual campground rules. The dispersed-camping freedom of the surrounding forest does not apply inside it. What changes is conditions — roads, gates, closures, fire rules. Check those with the unit before you commit to the drive.
Nearest road on the Forest Service MVUM — Little Bear · Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests · CO
The nearest road on the Forest Service MVUM is FR 116.1D (Little Bear Cg), 0 ft from the pin. The MVUM lists it as crushed aggregate or gravel surface and maintenance level 4 – moderate degree of user comfort.
Road season: open (MVUM) The MVUM lists FR 116.1D (Little Bear Cg), 0 ft from the pin, open to passenger vehicles Jul 1 – Oct 15. That season ends after Oct 15.
MVUM record for FR 116.1D (Little Bear Cg): “07/01-10/15” Read against the calendar on 2026-09-22; with JavaScript your browser re-checks it against today.
From the Forest Service's own Motor Vehicle Use Map roads layer (EDW, Clearinghouse refresh Aug 30, 2026), straight-line from the pin to the nearest mapped segment. The nearest segment is not necessarily the way in, a maintenance level is the agency's class and not a report on today, and a road's season is the road's — it is not a campground order. What the levels mean → What an MVUM is →
USGS topo — contours & terrain
Aerial — USGS / NAIP
Weather outlook — at Little Bear
Loading the latest forecast…
Live NWS area forecast (~2.5 km grid, not elevation-corrected). Camp sits at 10,248 ft.
Fire & smoke — around Little BearNIFC · AirNow
Checking active fires & air quality…
Active wildfires from NIFC (within ~50 mi); air quality from AirNow. Always confirm current fire restrictions with the managing office before you go.
Everything you need — measured from Little Bear · Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests · CO
▲ your camp. Rings are 15, 30 and 60 straight-line miles; bearings are approximate and roads run longer.
Nearest of each
- EVEV fast charger10 mi
- @Mail12 mi
- +Urgent care12 mi
- FFuel12 mi
- GGrocery12 mi
- DDump16 mi
- ShShower16 mi
- HHardware20 mi
- RxPharmacy20 mi
- MMechanic20 mi
- LLaundry20 mi
- WWater24 mi
- OOutfitter30 mi
- PPropane49 mi
≤30 mi30–4545+water
The read: water is a real 24-mi drive, fuel & food sit about 12 mi out.
One dot per need — the nearest of each kind, straight-line from camp. Places from OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors); the EV fast charger from the US DOE station locator. Open in Google Maps ↗
The site — Little Bear
Access
Drive-up
Land
U.S. Forest Service
Elevation
10,248 ft
Ground slope
1.6% · flat
State
CO
Coordinates
39.03456, -107.99795
Cost
Fee
Nearby & resupply — around Little Bear · Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests · CO (OpenStreetMap)
- Water featureIsland Lake · ~0.1 mi · USGS: perennial lake or pond
- Nearest townCedaredge · ~10.5 mi
- Rail & highwaynone mapped within 10 mi
- Drinking waternone within 10 mi
- FuelFuel · ~12.3 mi
- Propane / LPGnone within 31 mi
- Dump station~16.0 mi
- GroceriesGrocery · ~12.3 mi
- PharmacyPalisade Pharmacy · ~20.0 mi
- Hospital / clinicHospital · ~11.9 mi
- HardwareCoop Country Store · ~19.6 mi
EV charging — from Little Bear · Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests · CO — nearest public DC fast & Level 2 (US DOE station data)
- Nearest public DC fast charger10.3 mi straight-line S — SCVHISTSOC PIONEER TOWN 1, Cedaredge, CO · ChargePoint Network · CCS, NACS (Tesla) · 1 fast port listed · listed open, last confirmed by AFDC 2026-09-16 · hours: 24 hours daily · directions
- Public DC fast stations within reach5 within 25 mi · 41 within 50 · 85 within 100 · 171 within 150
- Nearest listing CHAdeMO20.5 mi — City of Delta, Delta
- Nearest public Level 2 (J1772)20.1 mi — DELTA HEALTH EV-EAST · ChargePoint Network · J1772 · 2 Level 2 ports listed · listed open, last confirmed by AFDC 2026-09-16 · hours: 24 hours daily
- Pricing at the fast chargernot listed
- Power (kW)not listed by AFDC — “DC fast” spans roughly 24 to 350 kW, so ask the network.
- Read this honestlyStraight-line miles, like every distance on this site. Roads run longer than this, and you have to get back. We know where a charger is listed. We don’t know if it works today, how fast it is, or the road miles. Check the network before you commit.
Snapshot 2026-09-16 · AFDC record 332130 · US DOE Alternative Fuels Data Center
Nearby restrooms — around Little Bear · Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests · CO — pit toilets, restrooms & rest areas (government data)
- Vault / pit toiletLittle Bear · at this camp · USFS
- Vault / pit toiletIsland Lake · ~0.5 mi SW · USFS
- Vault / pit toiletCrag Crest West · ~0.5 mi N · USFS
- Vault / pit toiletIsland Lake · ~0.6 mi W · USFS
Coming out here — Little Bear · Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests · CO
- Surface water mapped nearby: USGS maps Island Lake as a perennial lake or pond, ~0.1 mi from the pin (National Hydrography Dataset, data refreshed October 2022). Mapped as perennial is not the same as flowing today. Nobody has checked it for you. Filter or boil anything you drink.
- Ground slope around the pin: about 1.6% — flat. Measured on USGS's 3DEP elevation model (10 m data here), sampled every 10 metres around the point. That is the hillside, not the ground under your wheels — a graded pullout or a bench a few metres across is too small to show up at that spacing, and nobody has checked this one for you.
- No rail line and no interstate or US route is mapped within 10 mi of the pin. Checked against the FRA/BTS North American Rail Network (data updated Jul 21, 2026) and the Census's TIGER/Line primary roads (TIGER/Line 2025, released Oct 2025). Both are national files and both are maps of what is built, not counts of what moves on it.
- Power: Dave carries his own — batteries or solar. A generator will run your rig and it is also the thing everybody camped near you can hear.
- Getting online: Dave recommends Starlink. He has had it since SpaceX introduced it, used it for four years living on the road, and it delivers as promised — several hundred nights out, and he can count on one hand the places he could not connect. The cable on his unit runs 150 feet, which is usually all it takes to find enough sky. Starlink → Referral link — Starlink pays Dave $100 in cash if you sign up through it, and that money funds this site and the next trip. It costs you nothing and does not change the recommendation.
Open Little Bear elsewhere
Other camps near Little Bear
If this one is full, gated or washed out.
- Island Lake Campground~0.7 mi
- Ward Lake Campground~0.9 mi
- Cobbett Campground~0.9 mi · fee
- Ward Lake~1.1 mi · fee
The unit that manages Little Bear
Stay limits, road closures and fire restrictions at Little Bear are set by Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests, not by the campsite — check there before you go.
Snow, and when this opens
The nearest automatic snow station is Mesa Lakes at 10,160 ft, about 4 miles away. That is about the height of this camp, so it is a fair proxy. We do not repeat a depth here, because any number we stored would be stale by the time you read it — the station publishes today's.
How we know this — Little Bear
Source
U.S. Forest Service recreation data
Confidence
Likely — The record is good enough to put a pin on, but thin in places. Treat the details as a starting point, not gospel.
How it was placed
Developed FEE campground (not free) - review | auto:usfs-fee 2026-08-20: US Forest Service developed campground, agency coordinates, agency states a fee. No dollar amount in the agency record -- expect a charge and confirm the current rate before you go. Not field-verified. | Fee 2026-08-22: no rate published by the agency. Little Bear sits on the Grand Mesa (Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison NF), the one Colorado forest that publishes neither per-campground recreation pages nor a forest-wide fee table. Every slug probed on https://www.fs.usda.gov/r02/gmug/recreation/ returns 404, the forest's camping index https://www.fs.usda.gov/r02/gmug/recreation/camping-cabins carries no fees and does not list this campground at all, and the recreation.gov listing 10165410 returns an empty rates feed and an empty fee description. The Forest Service recreation-site dataset carries an undated single-site range of 22 to 24 dollars against this record, but that dataset is not a citable published rate and has been wrong elsewhere in this audit, so no figure is recorded here. Call the Grand Valley Ranger District. Checked https://www.fs.usda.gov/r02/gmug/recreation/little-bear-campground (404), https://www.fs.usda.gov/r02/gmug/recreation/camping-cabins and https://www.recreation.gov/camping/campgrounds/10165410. | Fee 2026-08-22: $22-24 per night for a single site -- the GMUG publishes it as a range, with additional vehicles at $11-12 per night, then states $22 per night per camping unit in the same block, so $22 is the figure to plan on and $24 the ceiling. Firewood is $10 a bundle. Season is Jun 14 to Oct 1, weather dependent, at 10,200 feet. Two caveats: the page was last updated May 30 2025, so it predates the 2026 season, and its recreation.gov listing has an empty rates feed, so there is no second source. Grand Valley Ranger District, above Cedaredge. Source: https://www.fs.usda.gov/r02/gmug/recreation/little-bear-campground-grand-valley-rd.
Nearest MVUM road
US Forest Service Motor Vehicle Use Map roads layer (EDW_MVUM_01, layer 1), Clearinghouse refresh Aug 30, 2026. Straight-line distance from the pin to the nearest mapped segment within 1 mi; surface type, maintenance level and open dates are the agency's own values for that segment, expanded from its codes and otherwise unedited. Nothing here says which road reaches the site.
EV chargers
US DOE Alternative Fuels Data Center station locator, snapshot 2026-09-16. Straight-line miles to the nearest public, open, unrestricted station; restricted and planned units are shown but never counted.
Field check
On the agency's books. The land manager inventoried this site, so its existence is not in question — current conditions are. Nobody from here has camped it recently.
What we don’t know about Little Bear
A land record can put you within a few meters of a spot. It cannot tell you any of this — so check it yourself, and treat anything below as the open question it is.
- Whether that MVUM road is the way in, and the last stretch beyond it
- Whether the site itself closes on its own schedule — only the road's season is on record
- How many rigs actually fit
- Cell coverage by carrier
- Current fire restrictions
- Whether any water here is drinkable
- Shade & wind exposure
- Noise and who else shows up
- Whether a listed EV charger works today, or the road miles to it
Before you go — Little Bear
Camping at altitude →When the high country opens →Winter vs summer roads →Off-grid communication →All field notes →