Apache (NM)
Closed for want of money or people is a choice somebody made.Ask who decided →
- Right now
- ClosedThe agency’s own sentence, quoted below
- A night
- $32When it reopens, per site
- Sites
- 28In the agency’s record
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 13 notices
In the agency’s own words
Apache Campground offers 24 sites that can accommodate tents or RVs up to 30 feet in length. This area is composed of a beautiful mixed conifer/aspen forest and sits at an elevation of 8,900 feet which provides Southern New Mexico an escape from summer heat on the desert floor. This campground is equipped with picnic tables, fire rings, parking, toilets, and a central garbage depository. Interpretive trails are also available. Hook ups are NOT available at this location. Keep reading
Facilities
This campground is equipped with picnic tables, fire rings, parking, toilets, and a central garbage depository. Contact Info Between 05/22/2026 and 09/06/2026 this location is staffed. Please call (575) 682-1518 to speak with local staff. From 09/07/2026 to 05/09/2027 this location is unstaffed. Please call (877) 444-6777 for general information.
What the agency tells you
Check in after 2pm, check out by noon.
Maximum RV length is 30 feet.
Please do not approach any wildlife.
Everything else this campground posts · 10
The stay limit at this campground is 14 days.
Extra Vehicles: Most sites can accommodate a maximum of 1 extra vehicle for an additional charge of $10.00 per night, which is paid at the campground if you did not pay for the Extra Vehicle Add On.
Don't Move Firewood: Please protect the Lincoln National Forest by preventing the spread of invasive species. Firewood can carry insects and diseases that can threaten the health of our forests. You can make a difference by obtaining and burning your firewood near your camping destination. For more information, please visit http://www.dontmovefirewood.org/
Fire Restrictions: Fire restrictions may be imposed at any time due to hot, dry weather conditions, at which time campfires and charcoal fires may not be allowed.
Reserved Sites will be held until check out time (NOON) the day following your arrival date. Sites must be occupied by the checkout time of that following day to hold a reservation or the site will be forfeited and released to other guests. Once your reservation start date has begun, neither the Recreation.gov Contact Center nor the campground manager will be able to modify your reservation.
Refunds: Refund requests made through www.recreation.gov will be charged a $10 processing fee. This fee is retained by the reservation service contractor along with the non-refundable reservation fee. All requests for the return of the non-refundable reservation fee and the cancellation fee will be declined by the campground concessionaire as they did not receive these fees (these are the fees retained by the reservation contractor, a different entity).
For more information about the Lincoln National Forest, please visit Home | Lincoln National Forest | Forest Service
Pets must be on a 6' leash.
Cancellations must be made 48 hours prior to the start of your reservation.
Limited cell service is available at this location.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 28
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 30 ft
- Accessible sites
- None listed
Facilities
- Toilets
- Yes, the record doesn't say what kind
- “This campground is equipped with picnic tables, fire rings, parking, toilets, and a central garbage depository.”
Around the campground
- Night sky · 127th darkest of 164 in NM
- Bortle 3
Nothing to book until it reopens
U.S. Forest Service’s own notice says why; it’s quoted below.
The closure above is the reading. We hold no availability snapshot for this campground, so there’s no thirty-night strip to draw under it.
Tell me when it reopens
Watch for it to come back
One email when the agency reopens it, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.
We check the agency’s own record once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time it stops saying closed.
Scanners that check every few minutes exist, and most of them charge. This one is free, it reads the same calendar, and it won’t always be first.
Every line of the receipt · 11
What you actually pay
“Extra Vehicles: Most sites can accommodate a maximum of 1 extra vehicle for an additional charge of $10.00 per night, which is paid at the campground if you did not pay for the Extra Vehicle Add On.” · the U.S. Forest Service’s own agency notice
Who keeps the booking fee
The agency’s own policy text says the reservation fee and the cancellation processing fee are “retained by the reservation service contractor”, and that a campground concessionaire will decline to refund them because “they did not receive these fees”. Recreation.gov is run under contract by Booz Allen Hamilton. What share of your booking fee the contractor keeps isn’t published in any federal dataset we can read, so we print no number for it. Our reporting on the contract →
How we know this receipt · 5
What the agency said · 1
Snow play areas within the Smokey Bear Ranger district near Ski Apache are closed until further notice to protect the public from the potential danger in proximity to the state highway 532.
U.S. Forest Service · posted Nov 1, 2024
Open within 60 miles · 1
The agency’s own word that these are open, not our reading of a season.
- Skyline CampgroundLincoln National Forest · 31 mi
rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Sep 10, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
29 records · the site map
All 29 records
The price is derived by CAMPANAC, not published per site: the per-night rate this campground publishes for each site’s own site type. 24 of the 29 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
Measured shade is NLCD Tree Canopy Cover 2024 (USDA Forest Service / MRLC) read at the site’s own coordinate, 27% canopy or more, and only for the sites the agency gave no Shade value. It never changes the agency’s own shaded count beside it.
| A | 01 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $32 | |
| A | 02 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $32 | |
| A | 03 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $32 | |
| A | 04 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $32 | |
| A | 05 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $32 | |
| A | 06 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $32 | |
| A | 07 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $32 | |
| A | 08 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $32 | |
| A | 09 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $32 | |
| A | 10 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $32 | |
| A | 11 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $32 | |
| A | 12 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $32 | |
| A | 13 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $32 | |
| A | 14 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $32 | |
| A | 15 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $32 | |
| A | 16 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $32 | |
| A | 17 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $32 | |
| A | 18 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $32 | |
| A | 19 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $32 | |
| A | 20 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $32 | |
| A | 21 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $32 | |
| A | 22 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $32 | |
| A | 23 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $32 | |
| A | 24 HOST | host pad | 30 ft | $32 | |
| A | 25 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $32 | |
| Scan and Pay | ScanPay 2 | type not stated | |||
| Scan and Pay | ScanPay 3 | type not stated | |||
| Scan and Pay | ScanPay 4 | type not stated | |||
| Scan and Pay | Standard | type not stated | 4,469 ft |
The agency files 1 more record here that isn’t a site for the night. It names it a host pad. It’s in the table above, marked for what it is, and it isn’t counted as a site.
OpenStreetMap has no toilet mapped within 1 km of this campground, so no site here carries a toilet distance. That’s a gap in the map, not a finding about the campground.
25 of 29 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Saddle (NM)Lincoln National Forest · 0.3 miSilver Campground and AmphitheaterLincoln National Forest · 0.4 mi
Pines CampgroundLincoln National Forest · 0.5 mi
Silver (NM)Lincoln National Forest · 0.5 mi
Lower Fir Group AreaLincoln National Forest · 0.6 miTravel east on US82 from Cloudcroft, turn left onto NM244. In approximately 4 miles turn right at the Silver-Saddle-Apache Campground Complex sign (Forest Road 24C).
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Cloudcroft, NM
Typical weather
Typical October night 34°F, day 60°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 19°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.
Daily high and lowDays with 0.10 in or more
A normal is the 1991-2020 average for the month, not a forecast: about half of all Junes are colder than the June line. The seven-day forecast above answers the other question.
The land, and who answers for it
what threatens it · who answers for it · a letter you can send
Roadless country, and what’s coming for it
You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.
Who answers for this land
Apache (NM) is in New Mexico’s 2nd congressional district. Its representative, Gabe Vasquez (D), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: A. See every public-lands vote →
Who can change it · 3
Filed as maintenance from the agency’s own words “until further notice”. That reading is ours. The draft to the agency asks what closed Apache (NM), what reopening it would cost and what date they’re working towards. The draft to Congress asks them to put the same question in writing and to fund the answer.
- The member who votes the moneyGabe VasquezU.S. Representative · New Mexico’s 2nd district
- Your senator, on the same appropriationBen Ray LujánU.S. Senator · New Mexico
- Your senator, on the same appropriationMartin HeinrichU.S. Senator · New Mexico
Read the draft, or change the wording
For the camper who found out at the gate, or a week before the trip. Every draft is written from this campground’s own record (its agency, its unit, its site count and its own weekend) and the buttons above copy whichever wording is selected here.
Asks them to find out what reopening Apache (NM) would cost, and to treat the deferred-maintenance line as the thing that decides it.
Subject Apache (NM) is closed (Lincoln National Forest, New Mexico)
Dear Gabe Vasquez, I’m a constituent in New Mexico’s 2nd district. I went to camp at Apache (NM), Lincoln National Forest, New Mexico and found it closed. The notice says: "Snow play areas within the Smokey Bear Ranger district near Ski Apache are closed until further notice to protect the public from the potential danger in proximity to the state highway 532." (https://www.fs.usda.gov/r03/lincoln/alerts/snow-play-closure, read Oct 16, 2026) That’s a maintenance closure, which makes it a budget question before it’s anything else. A campground doesn’t need this work because of bad luck. It needs it because the work was deferred until it couldn’t be deferred any longer. Please ask the U.S. Forest Service, in writing, what reopening Apache (NM) would cost and where that work sits on their own list. And when their budget comes to a vote, treat the recreation and deferred-maintenance lines as the thing that decides whether these 28 campsites are open next season. The people who open these campgrounds, collect the fees and keep the water running are seasonal positions. At GS-5, base pay plus the government's own 36.25% benefit factor, one costs about $47,414 a year. One percent of the $13.3 billion the USS Gerald R. Ford cost to procure would pay for about 2,800 of them for a year. Both figures are the government's own (a Congressional Research Service report and an OPM pay table), and I’m glad to send them. Sent about Apache (NM) (Lincoln National Forest, New Mexico) via campanac.com
Asks them to find out what reopening Apache (NM) would cost, and to treat the deferred-maintenance line as the thing that decides it.
Subject Apache (NM) is closed (Lincoln National Forest, New Mexico)
Dear Ben Ray Luján, I’m a constituent in New Mexico. I went to camp at Apache (NM), Lincoln National Forest, New Mexico and found it closed. The notice says: "Snow play areas within the Smokey Bear Ranger district near Ski Apache are closed until further notice to protect the public from the potential danger in proximity to the state highway 532." (https://www.fs.usda.gov/r03/lincoln/alerts/snow-play-closure, read Oct 16, 2026) That’s a maintenance closure, which makes it a budget question before it’s anything else. A campground doesn’t need this work because of bad luck. It needs it because the work was deferred until it couldn’t be deferred any longer. Please ask the U.S. Forest Service, in writing, what reopening Apache (NM) would cost and where that work sits on their own list. And when their budget comes to a vote, treat the recreation and deferred-maintenance lines as the thing that decides whether these 28 campsites are open next season. The people who open these campgrounds, collect the fees and keep the water running are seasonal positions. At GS-5, base pay plus the government's own 36.25% benefit factor, one costs about $47,414 a year. One percent of the $13.3 billion the USS Gerald R. Ford cost to procure would pay for about 2,800 of them for a year. Both figures are the government's own (a Congressional Research Service report and an OPM pay table), and I’m glad to send them. Sent about Apache (NM) (Lincoln National Forest, New Mexico) via campanac.com
Asks them to find out what reopening Apache (NM) would cost, and to treat the deferred-maintenance line as the thing that decides it.
Subject Apache (NM) is closed (Lincoln National Forest, New Mexico)
Dear Martin Heinrich, I’m a constituent in New Mexico. I went to camp at Apache (NM), Lincoln National Forest, New Mexico and found it closed. The notice says: "Snow play areas within the Smokey Bear Ranger district near Ski Apache are closed until further notice to protect the public from the potential danger in proximity to the state highway 532." (https://www.fs.usda.gov/r03/lincoln/alerts/snow-play-closure, read Oct 16, 2026) That’s a maintenance closure, which makes it a budget question before it’s anything else. A campground doesn’t need this work because of bad luck. It needs it because the work was deferred until it couldn’t be deferred any longer. Please ask the U.S. Forest Service, in writing, what reopening Apache (NM) would cost and where that work sits on their own list. And when their budget comes to a vote, treat the recreation and deferred-maintenance lines as the thing that decides whether these 28 campsites are open next season. The people who open these campgrounds, collect the fees and keep the water running are seasonal positions. At GS-5, base pay plus the government's own 36.25% benefit factor, one costs about $47,414 a year. One percent of the $13.3 billion the USS Gerald R. Ford cost to procure would pay for about 2,800 of them for a year. Both figures are the government's own (a Congressional Research Service report and an OPM pay table), and I’m glad to send them. Sent about Apache (NM) (Lincoln National Forest, New Mexico) via campanac.com