Chilkoot
2Heads up2 fires, nearest 14 mi
- Right now
- Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
- A night
- $41From, per site
- Sites
- 3413 on recreation.gov
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 9 notices
In the agency’s own words
Chilkoot is named for the creek that runs by the campground. The facility is shaded by a grove of Ponderosa pine, fir and cedar, and offers ample space for tent or RV camping. This campground is located at an elevation of approximately 4,600 feet, providing a comfortable camping experience during the hottest days of summer. Keep reading
Recreation
A popular recreation and resort area is a few miles away at Bass Lake. Activities here include motorized and non-motorized boating, fishing, swimming, hiking, sailing and water skiing. Anglers can fish in Chilkoot Creek for channel catfish, sucker and brown trout. Other nearby activities include hiking the Buena Vista trail and paddling on Willow Creek.
Facilities
This rustic campground provides a host and vault toilets but no water. Each unit has a gravel parking spur, picnic table and fire ring. Some sites are located on slopes and are not suitable for tents, while other sites are tent only.
Natural Features
The Sierra National Forest, located on the western slope of the central Sierra Nevada, is known for its spectacular mountain scenery and abundant natural resources. The terrain includes rolling, oak-covered foothills, heavily forested middle elevation slopes and the starkly beautiful alpine landscape of the High Sierra.
Nearby Attractions
Yosemite National Park can be reached in under an hour from Chilkoot Campground. The South Fork of the Merced River is also nearby, which is popular for whitewater rafting.
Charges & Cancellations
Once your reservation start date has begun, neither the Recreation.gov Contact Center nor the campground manager will be able to modify your reservation.
What the agency tells you
Be bear aware; keep all food out of site in approved containers or locked inside your vehicle and remove all food from area after eating; always keep a clean camp and do not feed any wild animals.
Drinking water is not provided at this campground
Two pets per site, must be leashed at all times.
Everything else this campground posts · 6
Please Note: One RV with tow per single site or one vehicle per tent site. Most sites can accommodate 1 extra vehicle that is not included with the reservation fee. Extra vehicle will be charged a per night fee and collected at the campground.
Fire Restrictions: Fire restrictions may be imposed at any time due to hot, dry weather conditions, at which time campfires and charcoal fires may not be allowed. For current fire conditions or weather closures contact the Sierra National Forest Headquarters, (559) 297-0706.
Reserved Sites will be held until check out time (12pm) the day following your arrival date. Sites must be occupied by the checkout time of that following day to hold a reservation or the site will be forfeited and released.
Once your reservation start date has begun, neither the Recreation.gov Contact Center nor the campground manager will be able to modify your reservation.
Don't Move Firewood: Protect California's forests from tree-killing pests by buying your firewood locally and burning it on-site. For more information visit firewood.ca.gov.
Click here to learn more about the Sierra National Forest
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 34 · 7 tent-only, 4 walk-in
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 54 ft
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…rustic campground provides a host and vault toilets but no water. Each unit has a gravel parking spur,…”
- Drinking water
- None, bring your own
- “…provides a host and vault toilets but no water. Each unit has a gravel parking spur, picnic table…”
- Camp host
- On site
- recreation.gov lists “Host”
- Stay limit
- 14 nights
- recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, River, Creek
- Boating
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Swimming
- Water sports
- Night sky · 844th darkest of 1,201 in CA
- Bortle 4
No reading yet, book on recreation.gov
recreation.gov lists 13 of the 34 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.
Tell me when the season opens
Watch for the season to open
One email when the season goes on sale, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.
We check once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time the agency has that season on sale.
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 rate for this season, $41 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.
“Once your reservation start date has begun, neither the Recreation.gov Contact Center nor the campground manager will be able to modify your reservation.” · this campground’s own terms
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 · 6
rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
34 sites · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 9 mapped sitesAll 34 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. 30 of the 34 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.
| 1 | 1 | standard nonelectric | 36 ft | $41 | ||
| 1 | 10 | walk to | ||||
| 1 | 11 | walk to | ||||
| 1 | 12 | walk to | ||||
| 1 | 13 | type not stated | $41 | |||
| 1 | 14 | standard nonelectric | 54 ft | $41 | ||
| 1 | 2 | standard nonelectric | 36 ft | $41 | ||
| 1 | 3 | standard nonelectric | 36 ft | $41 | ||
| 1 | 4 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $41 | ||
| 1 | 5 | tent only nonelectric | 36 ft | $41 | ||
| 1 | 6 | tent only nonelectric | 36 ft | $41 | ||
| 1 | 7 | tent only nonelectric | 36 ft | $41 | ||
| 1 | 8 | standard nonelectric | 24 ft | $41 | ||
| 1 | 9 | walk to | ||||
| AREA CHILKOOT | A001 | tent only nonelectric | 154 ft | 200 ftNorth Fork Willow Creek | $41 | |
| AREA CHILKOOT | A002 | standard nonelectric | 154 ft | 47 ftNorth Fork Willow Creek | $41 | |
| AREA CHILKOOT | A003 | standard nonelectric | $41 | |||
| AREA CHILKOOT | A004 | tent only nonelectric | 122 ft | 74 ftNorth Fork Willow Creek | $41 | |
| AREA CHILKOOT | A005 | tent only nonelectric | 122 ft | 55 ftNorth Fork Willow Creek | $41 | |
| AREA CHILKOOT | A006 | tent only nonelectric | $41 | |||
| AREA CHILKOOT | A007 | standard nonelectric | 181 ft | 106 ftNorth Fork Willow Creek | $41 | |
| AREA CHILKOOT | A008 | standard nonelectric | 178 ft | 96 ftNorth Fork Willow Creek | $41 | |
| AREA CHILKOOT | A009 | standard nonelectric | 178 ft | 17 ftNorth Fork Willow Creek | $41 | |
| AREA CHILKOOT | A010 | standard nonelectric | 213 ft | 246 ftNorth Fork Willow Creek | $41 | |
| AREA CHILKOOT | A011 | standard nonelectric | 197 ft | 269 ftNorth Fork Willow Creek | $41 | |
| AREA CHILKOOT | FS1-20 | type not stated | 20 ft | $41 | ||
| AREA CHILKOOT | FS1-20N | type not stated | 20 ft | $41 | ||
| AREA CHILKOOT | FS1-30 | type not stated | 30 ft | $41 | ||
| AREA CHILKOOT | FS1-306 | standard nonelectric | $41 | |||
| AREA CHILKOOT | FS1-307 | standard nonelectric | $41 | |||
| AREA CHILKOOT | FS1-308 | standard nonelectric | $41 | |||
| AREA CHILKOOT | FS1-30N | type not stated | 30 ft | $41 | ||
| AREA CHILKOOT | FT1-20 | type not stated | 20 ft | $41 | ||
| AREA CHILKOOT | FT1-20N | type not stated | 20 ft | $41 |
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.
25 of 34 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions
Where it is
Soquel CampgroundSierra National Forest · 3.1 miWhiskers CampgroundSierra National Forest · 3.4 mi
Recreation PointSierra National Forest · 3.6 mi
Crane ValleySierra National Forest · 3.6 miGaggs Camp CampgroundSierra National Forest · 3.8 miDirections from Fresno: Take Highway 41 through Oakhurst, California. Turn east on Forest Road 222 (Bass Lake turnoff) and continue on for 7 miles. Turn left onto Beashore Road, follow Beashore Road for 4 miles to the Chilkoot Campground.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Oakhurst, CA
Typical weather
Typical October night 37°F, day 64°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical December night 26°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
Chilkoot is in California’s 5th congressional district. Its representative, Tom McClintock (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →