CAMPANAC.Powered by public lands intelligenceMore Than Just Parks
The map
U.S. Forest Service · Roosevelt National Forest · CO

Big Bend Campground

First come, first servedNo reservation, and none to be had: the sites go to whoever pulls in first.

This is how it should work.

Get directionsWhat it costs, and the rules
Right now
Listed not openA database flag with no reason and no date
Drawn from the record · 7,730 ft · 0% tree cover · Cache la Poudre River within reach · Bortle 3 sky
7,730 ftElevation
229 ftWater · Cache la Poudre River
22.3 miNW of Estes Park, CO
0%Tree cover
Bortle 3Night sky · 358th darkest of 522 in CO

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

This campground is located on a sagebrush and open conifer forest flat adjacent to the Cache La Poudre River. There are eight sites available, including three walk-in tent sites. Each site contains a tent pad, fire grate and picnic table. All campsites with a tent pad have a bear locker. Primary recreation opportunities in the area include fishing, hiking and wildlife viewing. There is a bighorn sheep viewing station along the entrance road to the campground. View a campground map .

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

Facilities

Bear boxes
Yes
Source: Stated in the agency description

Around the campground

On the water
River
Fall color · reported 5 days ago, 30 km away
Peak color
Source: Stated in the agency description
Fall color: More Than Just Parks foliage tracker, joined to this campground by distance (30 km) · Oct 12, 2026

Nothing to book, just show up

One of 1,623 federal campgrounds where the site still goes to whoever pulls in first. Get there before noon on a summer weekend.

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.

BookingNo reservationsNothing to book, and no release date to wait forthe record
Runs itU.S. Forest Servicethe agency’s record
Directions
Every line of the receipt · 6

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.
Check our campground table for fee information.
Fees are discounted 25% when water is off.
Senior Passes and Access Passes provide cardholders half price for basic campground fees.
The booking feerecreation.gov
Nothing. This campground takes no bookings, so there’s no reservation fee to pay.
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
Coordinate40.71041, -105.72657

Where it is

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

The weather

the next four days · the thirty-year normal

Next four days, and the thirty-year normal

Forecast

Overnight35°Clear
Saturday65°Sunny
Saturday Night39°Mostly Clear
Sunday66°Mostly Sunny

NWS forecast for Red Feather Lakes, CO

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

Typical weather

Typical October night 29°F, day 56°F.

Coldest month of the year: typical February night 15°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: RUSTIC 9WSW, CO (USC00057296), 1 mile away and 30 ft lower
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

what threatens it · who answers for it

Roadless country, and what’s coming for it

Roadless
Green Ridge - East26,712 acres · 2 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
Green Ridge - West13,634 acres · 7 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
Comanche Peak Adjacent Area46,179 acres · 9 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

Joe Neguse, official portrait

Big Bend Campground is in Colorado’s 2nd congressional district. Its representative, Joe Neguse (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’s own recreation database flags it not open and publishes no reason and no date. That’s a flag, not a notice.
Listed not open: USFS EDW Recreation Opportunities, openstatus field: a not-open flag in a database, with no reason and no date published; read there since Sep 9, 2026. A flag, not a notice, so this page doesn’t call it a closure. · Oct 17, 2026
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: 0.14 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 522 rated federal campgrounds in Colorado · 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 (30 km) · Oct 12, 2026
Reported by: iNaturalist fall color observations, reported peak color · Oct 12, 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: Red Feather Lakes, CO, 7.9 mi SW (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