Big Flat
- Right now
- Listed not openA database flag with no reason and no date
- A night
- $10–$15Across the site types the agency prices
- Sites
- 1412 on recreation.gov
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there
In the agency’s own words
Big Flat Campground is closed indefinitely due to the 2024 Lava Fire. The site was burned. 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. Keep reading
Recreation
You may pass the day fishing for warmwater fish, like bass, in the river.
Facilities
No hook-ups are available. Please Pack-It-In/Pack-It-Out. Potable water is available for cooking and drinking. The campground has handicapped accessible toilets.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 14
- Hookups
- None
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
Facilities
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…Please Pack-It-In/Pack-It-Out. Potable water is available for cooking and drinking. The…”
No reading yet, book on recreation.gov
recreation.gov lists 12 of the 14 campsites the agency files here. The rest aren’t on its booking system, so a reservation won’t get you one.
No availability snapshot inside the last 36 hours, so this page draws nothing rather than ageing a reading into fiction.
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.
We make nothing when you book. The link goes straight to the government.
Every line of the receipt · 13
What you actually pay
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rates for this season, $10–$15 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.
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
rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
14 sites · the site map
All 14 sites
The price is derived by CAMPANAC, not published per site: the per-night rate this campground publishes for each site’s own site type. 14 of the 14 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.
| Big Flat | 01 | standard nonelectric | $10–$15 | |
| Big Flat | 02 | standard nonelectric | $10–$15 | |
| Big Flat | 03 | standard nonelectric | $10–$15 | |
| Big Flat | 04 | standard nonelectric | $10–$15 | |
| Big Flat | 05 | standard nonelectric | $10–$15 | |
| Big Flat | 06 | standard nonelectric | $10–$15 | |
| Big Flat | 07 | standard nonelectric | $10–$15 | |
| Big Flat | 08 | standard nonelectric | $10–$15 | |
| Big Flat | 09 | standard nonelectric | $10–$15 | |
| Big Flat | 10 | standard nonelectric | $10–$15 | |
| Big Flat | 11 | standard nonelectric | $10–$15 | |
| Big Flat | 12 | standard nonelectric | $10–$15 | |
| Scan and Pay | Double S&P | type not stated | $10–$15 | |
| Scan and Pay | Standard | type not stated | 302 ft | $10–$15 |
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.
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
French CreekBoise National Forest · 7.7 mi
Third Fork CabinBoise National Forest · 9.1 mi
Cabin CreekPayette National Forest · 11 miShady Pines CampgroundBoise National Forest · 12 miCartwright Ridge CampgroundBoise National Forest · 12 mi
Antelope (Boise National Forest, ID)Boise National Forest · 12 miTwenty six miles south of the town of Council. From Hwy 95 turn east on Road #206 and travel approximately 16 miles to the campground entrance. Long and windy gravel road. Narrow in spots.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Cascade, ID
Typical weather
Typical October night 31°F, day 58°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 15°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 Julys are colder than the July line. The seven-day forecast above answers the other question.
The land, and who answers for it
what threatens it · who answers for it
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
Big Flat is in Idaho’s 1st congressional district. Its representative, Russ Fulcher (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →