I don’t go on a lot of frontcountry camping trips these days, but every now and then I like to do something a little bit easier than a backpacking trip, or I’d like to hang out with more of my friends, in which case, a little bit of car camping is much more accommodating. Despite living in the lower mainland for 12 years, I’d never actually been to Harrison Lake. I’ve been in the general area for other reasons, but this trip was my first time recreating on the lake. I did this trip a year ago, in late June 2025.

There are lots of campgrounds on Harrison Lake, but I didn’t know very much about them. My impression had always been that they were first come, first serve rec sites. For this reason, I never bothered to visit them because I don’t like having to rush to get campsites on a weekend, I’d rather just book them. But I decided I wanted to go to Harrison for my birthday and Carolyn did a lot of research and we learned that most of these campsites are actually reservable! They’re just private campgrounds rather than BC Parks sites.

If you spend some time zooming around on google maps, you’ll see that there are a half dozen of campsites on either side of the lake. Fortunately, the campsites all seem to be managed by two separate entities known as East Harrison and West Harrison. There are 3 campgrounds on the East side of the lake, Cascade Peninsula, Bear Creek, and Cogburn Beach. There are 2 campgrounds on the West side of the lake, 10 Mile Bay and 20 Mile Bay. Both entities also manage a number of other campgrounds not located on the lake, as well as group sites, and you can find those on their websites too.

Most of the campgrounds have a mix of both FCFS and reservable sites, except for Cogburn Beach, which appears to be all FCFS. You should spend some time researching the road conditions before visiting. All sites are accessible via gravel road and from my experience, you don’t need any special kind of vehicle to visit the campsites on the east side of the lake. I haven’t been to the west side of the lake. The website says that 4 wheel drive is not required, but roads can be rough.

The campground we chose for my trip was Bear Creek Campground. It’s located on the east side of the lake. It’s approximately 15km along gravel road and is a mixture of FCFS sites and reservable, some of which are in the forest and a few of which are along the beach. Ours was a drive in site, but I think there are a few walk in sites too. Even though we went in late June, the weather wasn’t great, so the campsite was not full. However, the camp caretaker told us that on a nice weekend in the summer, all the campsites are usually gone by Friday afternoon. So unless you’re visiting on a weekday, it may be challenging to get a site.

The rain wasn’t enough to deter us and we set up a couple of pop-ups and spent two days hanging out and having campfires. Seth and I brought our kayaks since the campsite is right next to the lake. Harrison Lake has a bit of a reputation for wind if you’re boating and I definitely recommend to exercise caution in the area. However, sometimes when it rains, it completely kills the wind and that was the case on the weekend that we visited. The water was like a dream all weekend and even in the middle of the afternoon on Saturday, it was dead flat.

It didn’t rain the whole weekend, just on and off, so we had a lot of opportunities to enjoy the boats. We took them out for sunset on Friday night, and then several times on Saturday. We didn’t paddle too far, just a couple of kilometres along the shoreline, but the lake was empty on this particular weekend and we had the unique opportunity to go skinny dipping in Harrison Lake, not the easiest feat since it’s usually quite busy!

Otherwise, we didn’t do a lot on this trip aside from hang out on the beach and walk up to the road to see the Bear Creek waterfall, but it was still a fun trip. We all took turns in the kayaks, went for a cold dip in the water, and enjoyed BBQing and hanging out around the fire. The activities at Harrison Lake definitely center around the lake, so it makes for a good summer trip. I’m not sure when I’ll be back again, but I would love to explore the west side of the lake in the future!