Bishop Mountain Cabin
- Right now
- Closedrecreation.gov lists every site closed this weekend, read 16:27 UTC
- Sites
- 1In the agency’s record
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 10 notices
In the agency’s own words
Bishop Mountain Cabin was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1938. The one-room cabin formerly housed Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management employees who stayed there to watch for forest fires. A historic fire lookout tower is nearby. The cabin was used for lookout workers until the early 1980s. Guests can drive to the cabin from early June through mid-November, weather permitting, although about 16 miles of the trip are on high-clearance gravel roads. Four wheel drive pick-up trucks are required for cabin access. During winter months November through May, access to the cabin is accessible by snowmobile or other snow means, on an ungroomed portion of the road. The cabin provides several conveniences, but guests should be prepared to bring most of their own supplies and gear for a comfortable stay. Keep reading
Recreation
Guests at Bishop Mountain Cabin can participate in numerous recreational activities. Nearby logging roads are suitable for mountain biking. Hiking, snowmobiling and horseback riding trails are nearby. This area is also popular with hunters and berry pickers.
Facilities
Guests will find two sets of bunkbeds with mattress pads, a dining table and chairs. A wood cook stove is available for cooking and heating, and firewood is provided. A vault toilet is located in a separate building. Running water and electricity are not available. Guests must bring their own water supply as well as trash bags for packing out garbage. Bedding, matches, lighting and first aid supplies are not provided.
Natural Features
The cabin sits at 7,800 feet on the summit of Bishop Mountain, which is covered by pine trees. This mountain sits on the western border of Henry's Fork Caldera, an 18-mile long, 23-mile wide caldera located just west of Yellowstone National Park. Visitors are awarded scenic views of the surrounding mountains. Wildlife in this area includes black bear, wolf, elk, moose, mule deer, and grizzly bears.
Nearby Attractions
Harriman State Park is approximately 14 miles east of Bishop Mountain and open year-round. It lies within a wildlife refuge that's part of the Yellowstone Ecosystem. Visitors often see moose, elk, sandhill cranes and trumpeter swans. Anglers can find some of the best fly-fishing in the nation, and there are numerous multi-use trails.
What the agency tells you
Four wheel drive pick-up trucks are needed to access the cabin. Pick up the key at the Ashton Ranger Station, Monday - Friday 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; to make arrangements for after hours or weekend pickup, call (208) 652-7442 during regular business hours.
This cabin is located in grizzly/black bear country. All food and coolers must be stored according to the Caribou Targhee National Forest Food Storage Order #04-15-23-217 .
Drinking water is not provided, please bring plenty of water.
Everything else this campground posts · 7
Please leave the cabin clean for the next occupant.
Please make sure fires in the outside campfire ring are extinguished completely before leaving the cabin. Abandoning campfires during any point in your stay at the cabin can result in a violation. Since water is not available at the cabin, please bring extra water to help extinguish campfire.
This is a pack-it-in/pack-it-out facility; please take all trash with you when leaving the cabin.
Guests should be aware that there is a risk of exposure to hantavirus when visiting remote cabins; click here to learn more.
Click here for more information about Caribou-Targhee National Forest.
Don't Move Firewood: Help prevent the spread of tree-killing pests in our national forests by obtaining firewood near your destination and burning it on-site. For more information visit dontmovefirewood.org.
Please do not climb the lookout tower.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 1 · 1 cabin
- Hookups
- None
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- VAULT TOILETS on 1 of 1 campsite records
- Drinking water
- None, bring your own
- “…are not available. Guests must bring their own water supply as well as trash bags for packing out…”
- Firewood
- Mentioned
Around the campground
- Berry Picking
- Hiking
- Hunting
- Mountain biking
- Stargazing
- Wildlife viewing
Nothing to book until it reopensread 16:27 UTC
recreation.gov lists every site closed this weekend
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.
Tell me when it reopens
Watch for it to come back
One email when the agency reopens it, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.
We check the agency’s own record once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time it stops saying closed.
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.
Every line of the receipt · 11
What you actually pay
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
Why this page can’t say why
recreation.gov lists every site at Bishop Mountain Cabin closed this Friday and Saturday night. The U.S. Forest Service has published no closure notice we hold, so this page can’t say why, and it won’t fill the gap with a guess. A closed night isn’t a sold-out one: the reservations its record still carries were taken before the sites were closed.
There’s no notice to quote and no reason to argue with, so this page offers you the watch and the list below, and no letter.
Open within 60 miles · 1
The agency’s own word that these are open, not our reading of a season.
- Bear Creek Campground and Picnic AreaBeaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest · 57 mi
recreation.gov availability, read 16:27 UTC · rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Sep 10, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
1 sites · the site map
All 1 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. 1 of the 1 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| BIMC | 001 | cabin nonelectric | 2.4 mi | $30 |
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
Riverside CampgroundTarghee National Forest · 6.6 mi
Riverside (ID - Targhee)Targhee National Forest · 6.6 mi
Box Canyon CampgroundTarghee National Forest · 8.6 mi
ButtermilkTarghee National Forest · 9.3 mi
Buffalo CampgroundTarghee National Forest · 11 mi
Buffalo (Idaho)Targhee National Forest · 11 miFrom Ashton, ID, travel north on Highway 20 for 16 miles, then turn left (west) on North Antelope Flat Road (#168). Travel 7.5 miles to Bishop Mountain Road (#120) and then turn right (north) and travel for about 5.4 miles. The road dead ends at the cabin.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Island Park, ID
Typical weather
Typical October night 22°F, day 50°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical December night 1°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
What threatens this place
You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.
Who answers for this land
Bishop Mountain Cabin is in Idaho’s 2nd congressional district. Its representative, Mike Simpson (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →