CAMPANAC.Powered by public lands intelligenceMore Than Just Parks
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U.S. Forest Service · WA

Ballard

ReservableBooking 6 months out; today unlocks April 15. Season not published.
Book on recreation.govWe make nothing when you book
Right now
Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
A night
$10From, per site
Sites
41 on recreation.gov

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

This location is available on a first-come, first-served basis only. Visitors are required to physically arrive at the campground to purchase and claim a site. Once on-site, you may be able to pay for your campsite(s) by scanning a QR code using the Recreation.gov mobile app, and the Scan and Pay feature. If this option is available, you will need to first download the free Recreation.gov mobile app https://www.recreation.gov/mobile-app prior to your arrival as some remote areas have limited or no cellular service.

Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

Tents and rigs

Sites
4
Hookups
None
Accessible sites
None listed
Source: Recreation.gov campsite records · Aug 23, 2026

Nothing on the booking system for the next 30 nightsread 15:52 UTC

recreation.gov lists 1 of the 4 campsites the agency files here. The rest aren’t on its booking system, so a reservation won’t get you one.

Every one of the next thirty nights is in recreation.gov’s record and not one site is being offered on any of them. That’s a campground closed or not yet released for booking, not a sold-out one.

Booking window6 months outBooking opens 6 months ahead; today unlocks arrivals through April 15, 2027. The agency publishes no reservable season in the record we hold, so the window may close earlier than that.recreation.gov
A night$10plus $8 to reserve, once per bookingthe agency’s rate schedule
A weekend$28DerivedFriday and Saturday, everything includedours, from the lines above
If plans change$10 to cancel$10 to change a reservationrecreation.gov’s schedule
Runs itU.S. Forest ServiceBooked through recreation.govthe agency’s record
Watch for a cancellation

Full? Watch it.

One email when a night opens, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.

We read recreation.gov once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time a site in your window is free for the nights you asked for.

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.

Free forever, no booking kickbacks.
Book on recreation.gov

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

Every line of the receipt · 12

What you actually pay

The sign priceU.S. Forest Service
A night$10
ScanPay 1$10
Rates for the season the campground is in now, May 1, 2026 to Nov 1, 2026.
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.
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
One nightDerived$18
A weekend, Friday and SaturdayDerived$28

Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rate for this season, $10 a night, plus one $8 recreation.gov reservation fee for the booking. A weekend here means Friday and Saturday night, booked once. Optional charges (an extra vehicle, a second tent, a dump-station fee) are listed separately and aren’t in this total.

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 · 5
Sign price: recreation.gov facility rate schedule, quoted as the agency publishes it · Sep 10, 2026
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: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

recreation.gov availability, read 15:52 UTC · rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Sep 10, 2026 · How we know all this

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

The sites

4 sites

All 4 sites

Up to

The price is derived by CAMPANAC, not published per site: the per-night rate this campground publishes for each site’s own site type. 1 of the 4 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.

Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

Getting there

the agency’s directions · the phone number
The phoneN/A
The agency’s pageOfficial page ↗

The weather

Next four days, and the thirty-year normal

The land, and who answers for it

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: the number below is the only way to be sure.
Sites on recreation.gov: recreation.gov’s own month availability payload for this facility, asked for October 2026, November 2026 and July 2027. It names 1 of the 4 campsites the agency files here, and every one of them carries an answer either way. A campground nobody has read carries no answer at all, never a no. · Oct 14, 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.