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National Park Service · Fire Island National Seashore · NY

Backcountry Camping in the Otis Pike High Dune Wilderness

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Information
Possession or use of marijuana inside Fire Island National Seashore is prohibited. While New York provides for regulated possession and use of marijuana, it remains an illegal drug under federal law and enforced within National Park units.
Park Closure
Talisman-Barrett Beach Dock Closed for 2026 Season; Services Limited Due to damage from winter ice, the Talisman-Barrett Beach dock is closed. NPS staff are evaluating options for repairs. There is no timeline for restoration. Boaters should plan to anchor in the bay to access the site. Be advised that the…
Caution
West Nile Virus detected in Mosquito Samples at Carrington Tract West Nile Virus has been detected at the Carrington Tract from mosquito samples collected on September 30, 2026. Increased surveillance of mosquitoes in the area will continue. It is recommended visitors limit or forego outdoor activities…
Alerts: National Park Service alerts API · Oct 17, 2026
Reservable, and some sites walk-up36 of the 36 sites are kept for whoever pulls in first; the rest are booked ahead.
Book on recreation.govWe make nothing when you book
Right now
OpenThe agency lists it open
Sites
3636 of them walk-up
Season
Year-roundOpen year-round
Photos · NPS/Santos
777 ftWater · an unnamed pondOcean · 563 ft · to the Atlantic Ocean
0.3 miS of Bellport, NY
36Walk-up sites
0%Tree cover
Bortle 5Night sky · 4th darkest of 11 in NY
Open year-roundToday

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

Under the stars, near the sound of the surf, waking to a chorus of song birds, backcountry camping on Fire Island within the Otis Pike Fire Island High Dune Wilderness can be a memorable experience. This backcountry camping experience is available by permit only. Permits are limited and issued for specific nights and number of persons within the group. A maximum length of stay is three consecutive nights. Beach camping may be available from March 15 through Labor Day.

Source: National Park Service API · Aug 24, 2026

Facilities

Toilets
None. Pack out what you bring in
Drinking water
None, bring your own
Source: National Park Service and agency records

Around the campground

On the water
Beach
Fall color · reported 14 days ago, 27 km away
No change
Source: Stated in the agency description
Fall color: More Than Just Parks foliage tracker, joined to this campground by distance (27 km) · Oct 3, 2026

Some sites book, the rest walk up

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
If plans change$10 to cancel$10 to change a reservationrecreation.gov’s schedule
Runs itNational Park ServiceBooked through recreation.govthe agency’s record
Book on recreation.gov

We make nothing when you book. The link goes straight to the government.

Every line of the receipt · 10

What you actually pay

The sign priceNational Park Service
The National Park 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.
Backcountry Camping Permit Fee$25
The booking feerecreation.gov
Reservation fee, booked online$8
One fee per reservation, however many nights you book, and it’s non-refundable. $9 if you book by phone, $3 in person. The first-come sites here are paid at the campground and carry no booking fee.
Pass discounts only apply to the recreation (or use) fee for the facility. Other charges such as electricity or water hookups, reservation or other fees are not eligible for a discount.
What a stay costs
The agency publishes no nightly rate for this campground, so there’s nothing to add the $8 booking fee to. We won’t total a receipt with a number missing from it.
If your plans changerecreation.gov
Change fee, moving to dates outside your booking$10
Cancellation fee$10
Cancelling the day before, or the day of$10 + your first night
No-show$20 + your first night

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 · 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: National Park Service API · 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 · the phone number
Coordinate40.71155, -72.93188
The phone631-569-2100
The agency’s pageOfficial page ↗

Where it is

Source: National Park Service API · Aug 24, 2026

The weather

the next four days · the thirty-year normal

Next four days, and the thirty-year normal

Forecast

Overnight48°Rain Showers85% rain
Saturday54°Rain Showers then Mostly Cloudy82% rain
Saturday Night38°Mostly Clear
Sunday56°Sunny

NWS forecast for Fire Island, NY

Source: National Weather Service, OKX forecast office · Oct 17, 2026

Typical weather

Typical October night 46°F, day 64°F.

Coldest month of the year: typical January night 24°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.

90°32°10°

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 Julys are colder than the July line. The seven-day forecast above answers the other question.

Measured at: SHIRLEY BROOKHAVEN AP, NY (USW00054790), 8 miles away and 82 ft higher
Source: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, U.S. Climate Normals 1991-2020, monthly normals · Sep 8, 2026

The land, and who answers for it

who answers for it

Who answers for this land

Andrew Garbarino, official portrait

Backcountry Camping in the Otis Pike High Dune Wilderness is in New York’s 2nd congressional district. Its representative, Andrew Garbarino (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. 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: The agency lists it open right now.
Season: National Park Service API · Aug 24, 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: 2.4 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 11 rated federal campgrounds in New York · 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 (27 km) · Oct 3, 2026
Reported by: USA National Phenology Network (Nature's Notebook), reported no change · Oct 3, 2026
Cell signal: the Park 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: inside Fire Island, NY (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