CAMPANAC.Powered by public lands intelligenceMore Than Just Parks
The map
U.S. Forest Service · Santa Fe National Forest · NM

Aspen Basin Campground

1Heads up1 fire 8.2 mi away
Wildfire
Frijoles fire · 8.2 mi away · 15,956 acres · 90% contained · updated Sep 24, 2026
Fires: NIFC/IRWIN via MTJP wildfire tracker · Oct 6, 2026
The agency doesn’t say how you get a siteIts record carries no access type, so treat it as a place to phone before you drive.
Get directions
Right now
Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
Drawn from the record · 10,210 ft · 39% tree cover · Rio en Medio within reach · Bortle 4 sky
10,210 ftElevation
113 ftWater · Rio en Medio
5.6 miNE of Tesuque, NM
39%Tree cover
Bortle 4Night sky · 143rd darkest of 164 in NM

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

The Aspen Basin Campground is located adjacent to the very large parking area at Santa Fe Ski Basin. There are 10 units, Picnic tables, and fire rings. There is a vaulted toilet at the far west end of the parking lot. This campground is less developed than most, and primarily serves those who use it for an overnight stay before embarking on a backpack into the Pecos. There is ample space for trailer/RV camping, but no dump station is available. There is no potable water and no Campground Host. The entire area is very scenic, and NM 475 is also designated as the Santa Fe Scenic Byway. Because of the scenic quality and the easy access from Santa Fe, the area is very busy, especially in the summer and in the fall aspen viewing season.

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

Facilities

Toilets
Vault Toilets
“…tables, and fire rings. There is a vaulted toilet at the far west end of the parking lot. This…”
Drinking water
None, bring your own
“…but no dump station is available. There is no potable water and no Campground Host. The entire area is very…”
Source: read from the agency description, shown above · Sep 12, 2026

Around the campground

Fall color · reported 5 days ago, 2.9 km away
Peak color
Source: More Than Just Parks foliage tracker, joined to this campground by distance (2.9 km) · Oct 11, 2026

Phone before you drive

recreation.gov publishes no availability for a campground you can’t reserve, so there’s no thirty-night reading to draw here. The season bar above is what the agency does publish.

Booking window6 months outBooking opens 6 months ahead; today unlocks arrivals through April 16, 2027. The agency publishes no reservable season in the record we hold, so the window may close earlier than that.recreation.gov
Runs itU.S. Forest Servicethe agency’s record
Directions
Every line of the receipt · 3

What you actually pay

The sign priceU.S. Forest Service
The U.S. Forest Service publishes no per-night rate for this campground that we can read, so there’s no sign price to print. That’s a gap in the record, not a free campground.
The booking feerecreation.gov
We hold no recreation.gov booking record for this campground, so we can’t say whether a booking fee applies.
What a stay costs
The agency publishes no nightly rate for this campground, so there’s no total to show.
How we know this receipt · 4
Booking fee, change fee, cancellation fee, no-show: Rules and Reservation Policies, Recreation.gov, the published fee schedule, curated by hand into lib/reservation-fee-schedule.json (9 rows, each carrying its own verbatim sentence). The publisher states these policies were last updated September 2019. · Sep 9, 2026
The two totals: Derived by CAMPANAC by adding the agency’s own published nightly rate to recreation.gov’s own published reservation fee. Both components are cited above; the addition is ours and is shown only where every component is known. · Sep 9, 2026
Who keeps the booking fee: Recreation.gov facility policy text, Dead Swede Campground (facility 234221) · Not on the national policy page. This is agency policy text recreation.gov publishes on individual campground pages; this site holds it verbatim on 45 active campgrounds (campground_rules.cancellation_description, scripts/load-facility-rules.mjs). · Sep 9, 2026
The contract: Reservation Gods: Who Stole Our Campsites and Sold Them Back to Us, More Than Just Parks, April 2025 · Apr 1, 2025
Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

record Aug 24, 2026 · How we know all this

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

Getting there

the map and the coordinate
Coordinate35.79446, -105.80584

Where it is

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

The weather

the next four days

Next four days, and the thirty-year normal

Forecast

Today43°Sunny
Tonight24°Mostly Clear
Saturday45°Sunny
Saturday Night31°Partly Cloudy2% rain

NWS forecast for Rio en Medio, NM

Source: National Weather Service, ABQ forecast office · Oct 16, 2026

The land, and who answers for it

what threatens it · who answers for it

Roadless country, and what’s coming for it

Roadless
Tesuque Creek810 acres · 3 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
Black Canyon1,922 acres · 3 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
Pacheco Canyon1,012 acres · 3 mi · inventoried roadless area

You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.

Source: USFS Inventoried Roadless Areas via MTJP Roadless Map · Jul 29, 2026

Who answers for this land

Teresa Leger Fernandez, official portrait

Aspen Basin Campground is in New Mexico’s 3rd congressional district. Its representative, Teresa Leger Fernandez (D), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: A+. See every public-lands vote →

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

Source: U.S. Census district boundaries and the MTJP Congressional Public Lands Score

How we know

every fact on this page, and where it came from
Right now: U.S. Forest Service publishes no season and no closure for this campground, and it takes no bookings we can read. That’s a gap in the record and not a locked gate.
Elevation: USGS 3DEP elevation point query at this campground’s coordinate · Sep 7, 2026
Night sky: VIIRS Day/Night Band annual cloud-free composite, VNL V2 2024 (Earth Observation Group, Colorado School of Mines), read at the published coordinate: 0.33 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 164 rated federal campgrounds in New Mexico · Sep 8, 2026
Sky-glow model: Duriscoe, Anderson, Luginbuhl and Baugh (2018), a simplified model of all-sky artificial sky glow derived from VIIRS Day/Night band data, the National Park Service sky-glow model
Fall color: More Than Just Parks foliage tracker, joined to this campground by distance (2.9 km) · Oct 11, 2026
Reported by: iNaturalist fall color observations, reported peak color · Oct 11, 2026
Cell signal: the Forest Service’s own campground description, read as text by CAMPANAC. None of this is a measurement. It’s what the land manager published about the place, and phones, carriers and weather all disagree with each other; treat it as a warning, not a promise.
Nearest place of any size: Rio en Medio, NM, 4.8 mi ESE (a census designated place). Straight line.
Nearest town: U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line 2024 places, measured by CAMPANAC to the town boundary; population is the ACS 2020-2024 5-year estimate · Sep 9, 2026