We were super excited to camp at Colonial Creek and hike & paddle the weekend away. I've read so many reviews saying this is the best place to camp in the N Cascades but we'll try some of the smaller FS campgrounds in the future. As an update to prior reviews: currently there are few fcfs spots. Almost all spots in both N & S campgrounds are pre-reserved at a cost of $24/night.
I imagine your experience will be different on any given night based on the community camping at the time. But, boy would I ever think twice about camping here on a summer weekend again. It seemed like every site was over capacity with many cars and tents and huge groups of people jammed in everywhere. The result is complete chaos of barking dogs and screaming children and parties going late into the night. On the weekend we were here it seemed like a group of 50 or so folks had rented several sites and would gather to sing & talk lake into the night each night. Because there were SO many people at each site there were often lines at the bathrooms. That said, bathrooms were clean. Once everyone packed up and left on Sunday things were a lot more peaceful, so I'd definitely try here again-- just not on a weekend in July!
We were in site 163 which is huge with a huge tent pad and a very short walk to the open beach area which made it convenient for paddling. That said, it is almost a twin site with 162 and there is also tons of traffic. Like, you could almost stand between cars parked in both driveways and touch them. The sites on the lake side of the inner loop (like 157, 159, etc) seemed more private and away from the ruckus. But because the campground is situated in a valley and along the lake there is just an echoing quality about the noise here.
If you are a rooftop tenter it's probably worth noting that the parking spots for even the drive-up lake-side camp spots are basically in a parking lot/on the road and most of the campsite itself is a bit of a walk to the lake. read more