New Mexico Camping: Big Tesuque Campground

Latitude/Longitude: 35.7692, -105.8086 Elevation: 9675 ft
Weather Forecast: http://tinyurl.com/BigTesuqueWeather
Fire Restrictions: http://firerestrictions.us/nm/nm-usfs/santa-fe-nf--espanola-district/

We went to Big Tesuque Campground for our winter campout this year. It was pretty nice, and is just a few miles further up the ski road past Hyde Memorial State Park. This winter (2013-2014) has been pretty dry so far, and if we had gone to Hyde Park there would have been very little snow. But, by the time we got further up the mountain to Big Tesuque, there was somewhere around 6-8" of snow all over the campground. Much of it was fairly hard-packed and icy down near the parking lot, so we chose to walk in perhaps 100-200 yards from the parking lot to get to a spot with better snow for tent camping. But, it didn't seem like quite so much of a hike as when we had to do this at Hyde Park.

Santa Fe National Forest Website for Big Tesuque Campground

Big Tesuque is covered in aspen and conifers

Big Tesuque is apparently a very popular place for daytime sledding, so it was crawling with people when we got there on a Friday in the early afternoon. But, very few people went up as far as we did, so we had our camp site and sledding location mostly to ourselves.

Beautiful sunsets and great views

Big Tesuque is a Santa Fe National Forest campground, but it is a no-fee, no reservation, first-come-first-served camping spot. There is no potable water, but as you can see in one of the images below, there is a stream (North Fork Tesuque Creek) running through the campsite that even when half-frozen would have still provided water for filtering if necessary.

There are two vault toilets right at the parking lot. We were told they would be locked during the winter, but one of them was open while we were there.

I'm told that this place is very popular in the fall due to the aspen foliage. I'm sure it would be very pretty, if you are willing to deal with the crowds.