Black Canyon Of The Gunnison National Park guide · 2 min read
Camping Beside the Painted Wall
Camping inside the park is limited to designated campgrounds. Two of them sit on opposite rims, and a third, East Portal, lies at the bottom of the canyon.
Pitching a tent or parking a camper anywhere else, such as beside a road, along a trail, on an overlook or in another built-up area, is not allowed, so pick a campground or a wilderness route.
The South Rim is the better rim for watching the Painted Wall, and it also has more facilities and lookouts than the North Rim. Painted Wall View works for both sunrise and sunset, and Cedar Point offers a similar look at the cliff. For evening light, try Exclamation Point, Cedar Point Overlook or Sunset View Overlook. Warner Point suits a morning visit.
East Portal sits beside the Gunnison River at the bottom of the canyon. Tents are the only option at this campground, and its 15 sites are shaded by box elder trees. Vehicles longer than 22 feet cannot use the steep road down, which has a 16 percent grade. You enter through the park to reach it, but the campground itself falls inside Curecanti National Recreation Area.
Campers with solid experience and good preparation can set up a tent at the base of the inner canyon by scrambling down a wilderness route from either rim. Anyone heading into the wilderness on foot or by kayak needs a Wilderness Use Permit before setting out. The routes to the river are not maintained, and the going is very hard.
The canyon splits the park into a North Rim and a South Rim, and nothing spans the gap. No bridge crosses it, and no road links the two rims inside the park. Getting from one side to the other means using non-park roads, a drive of two to three hours. Few cliffs in North America are steeper, and the rock here is among the oldest on the continent.
