Camping at El Rito

My friend and I are heading to El Rito for a long weekend. I've read a lot of the posts on the El Rito page and am a bit nervous in regards to local riff-raff/sketchy local behavior on the road in to El Rito (we've never been before.) We'd like to avoid sketchiness at all costs, so does anyone have any beta on the best spots to camp on that road? From what I can tell, the sport and trad areas are on the same road, just the trad area is further up? Is it best to camp past the trad area?

Thanks!!

There are several nice spots to camp near the sport parking area. Take the road to the left. I've haven't had problems there. Northern NM can be sketchy at times but alot of the rep is unearned. Then again it only takes a couple fools (local or otherwise) to ruin a good time. Happened to be at Diablo Canyon. PM me if you want more info.

We generally camp off the spur road across from the sport area, as described in the online sport guide. You can find some sites that are set back from the spur road a bit which are nicer. The only "sketchiness" that I've experienced is a large truck driving up the road at ~2AM. The driver made his presence known by revving the engine, but was otherwise harmless. Note that this has occurred on several trips (sat nights I think) so this may be a fairly regular occurrence.

I've never climbed at the trad area, but from reading the online trad guide it seems that while there is a site/fire ring, camping in that area is discouraged. Perhaps others can chime in on this.

Despite stories to the contrary, we've never had any trouble with locals up there on our too-numerous-to-count day trips and overnight trips. My guess is the folks that have had trouble have camped right in the sport climbing area parking area. There's a fire ring there and it's right on the road. I do not recommend camping in the parking area. If you camp at one of the spots up the side road from the sport climbing parking area, it's beautiful meadow camping and you're not likely to have any trouble. Our favorite little camp spot there is up on a small ridge to the left as you drive up the side road from the sport climbing parking area. It'll look a bit like you're driving through a campsite to go up a small hill to the nice site. But you can't go wrong with any of the spots back there.

There's no problem with camping at the trad area either. And that's certainly more private and less-traveled. You are, more or less, camping in the parking area for the trad area but I'm guessing you won't see many others up there anyway.
FYI, if you're looking food I heartily recommend El Farolito in the town of El Rito for some tasty New Mexican food. It absolutely meets the criteria for hole-in-the-wall and has some tasty green and red chile. We love their red chile so much we named a route after our favorite El Farolito dish. It's right on the main highway through town at an intersection with another highway. You can't miss it.

Awesome, thanks for the info everyone! Excited to check out the climbing there.

Hopefully driving in tonight and leaving Sunday afternoon will allow us to bypass any weirdness :-)

And we'll definitely try to check out that Mexican place....sounds great!

Cheers!

Who doesn't rev their car up at two in the morning in New
Mexico? Pretty normal behavior, heck they were probably trying to be friendly. Have fun, El Rito is a great area.

Only mischief we encountered were a couple of big bears (travelling seperately but in the same direction) that smelled our bacon cooking and entered camp to sniff it out. We banged pots and pans and they moved on. Minutes later a guy in a truck rumbled up with a serious looking paintball gun and went off in pursuit of the bears. He was hoping to give them a sting so they would consider humans a danger. I have no idea how he knew about the bears as we only ran into one other group. Word travels fast in the campground. The sport climbing here is super fun.

Trip report: El Rito is great! Jason, we found the spot you mentioned and camped there. Great camping, great climbing. No problems at all with any local shenanigans/sketchiness. Went running every morning up and down that main dirt road and it was quiet. In fact, we only really saw other people (climbers) on Saturday night/Sunday when we were leaving. Had the place to ourselves the rest of the time which was kinda bizarre at first. But pretty sweet!!

Thanks for the beta all.

Just want to let everyone know, if El Rito has a reputation, it is deserved.
I bought my son aan elk tag for Dec 26th through the 30th. Being so late, El Rito was the best location to stay. I had a bad feeling about the place, but thought I would try it. The third day my son killed late afternoon. We arrived back to camp around 8:00 pm. Long story short, my brand new generator, chain saw, cordless tools, and other things were gone. They had a key for the underneath storage, so they found a hax saw and cut the handle on the generator. Everything was locked, but I have never changed the locks on the storage under the fifth wheel, really stupid. I was camped at the forest grounds north of town( really nice). There was always local traffic driving by, but I hoped everything being locked up would be enough. I would not suggest camping there unless you are not leaving your camper. Just wanted anyone who reads this, or is looking to know that surroundings do matter.