Cold River
- Right now
- Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
- A night
- $24From, per site
- Sites
- 8All of them booked ahead
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 10 notices
In the agency’s own words
Cold River Campground is located in a rustic, remote part of White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire, about 15 miles north of Fryeburg, Maine. It is a small facility with access to hiking and mountain biking trails and proximity to a small pond for fishing and canoeing. The White Mountains boast pristine forests, clear mountain streams and rivers and the tallest peaks in the Northeast. The forest encompasses nearly 800,000 acres in New Hampshire and western Maine, and is one of the most popular in the country. Keep reading
Recreation
The 4.5-mile Basin Trail leaves from nearby Basin Campground. Numerous other hiking and mountain biking trails lie within a short drive, including those in the Caribou Speckled Mountain Wilderness. Trout fishing is available in Basin Pond. The pond's calm waters are also ideal for canoeing. Learn more about recreation in the national forest.
Facilities
Cold River is a small facility with campsites organized around one loop. Accessible restrooms and a hand pump for water are provided. Picnic areas are nearby. There are no showers or a dump station.
Natural Features
The campground is in a pleasant mixed hardwood and pine forest, a short distance from Evans Brook and the 23-acre Basin Pond. The national forest is home to many species of northern wildlife, including moose, white-tailed deer and black bear. Almost 200 species of birds, including the rare Bicknell's Thrush, live in the White Mountains. Contact Info For facility specific information, please call (802) 289-0970.
Nearby Attractions
The towns of Fryeburg, Gilead and Stow, Maine have groceries, restaurants, gas and other conveniences. Campers might enjoy a scenic day trip to the Presidential Range, which consists of the tallest mountains in the forest, including the 6,288-ft. Mount Washington, the highest peak north of the Smoky Mountains and east of the Mississippi River. The area hosts four alpine and five nordic ski areas, which provide year-round recreation opportunities such as skiing, hiking, mountain biking, outdoor concerts, interpretive trails, special events and regional and national skiing and snowboarding races.
What the agency tells you
Two pets per site
No switching sites upon arrival
Be bear aware; keep all food out of site in approved containers or locked inside a hard-sided vehicle and remove all food from area after eating
Everything else this campground posts · 7
Please Note: Site fee includes one RV with tow vehicle, tent sites include two vehicles. If space allows a third vehicle would be an additional fee paid at time of check in if you did not pay for the Extra Vehicle Add On. Vehicles must fit on the parking spur at your site.
Reserved Sites will be held until checkout time (NOON) the day following your arrival date. Sites must be occupied by the checkout time of the second day to hold a reservation or the site will be forfeited and released to other guests.
Once your reservation start date has begun, neither the Recreation.gov Contact Center nor the campground manager will be able to modify your reservation.
Refunds: Refund requests made through www.recreation.gov will be charged a $10 processing fee. This fee is retained by the reservation service contractor along with the non-refundable reservation fee. All requests for the return of the non-refundable reservation fee and the cancellation fee will be declined by the campground concessionaire as they did not receive these fees (these are the fees retained by the reservation contractor, a different entity).
Visitors should be prepared for rugged trails and changing weather: Hike SafeHike Safe
Don't move firewood: To limit the spread of invasive tree-killing pests, firewood from outside the area is not permitted. Some states have quarantines and may confiscate your firewood. Please help protect our forests from invasive species by obtaining your firewood at or near your camping destination and burning it on-site. Visit dontmovefirewood.org for more information.
Click here to learn more about White Mountain National Forest
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 8
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 40 ft
- Accessible sites
- 8
- Pets
- Allowed
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Showers
- None at this campground
- “There are no showers or a dump station.”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…one loop. Accessible restrooms and a hand pump for water are provided. Picnic areas are nearby.…”
- Dump station
- Yes
- Stay limit
- 14 nights
- recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Around the campground
- On the water
- River, Creek
- Biking
- Boating
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Picnicking
- Night sky · 2nd darkest of 28 in NH
- Bortle 3
- Fall color · reported 4 days ago, 19 km away
- Minimal color
No reading yet, book on recreation.gov
Every site here is reservable, and the record lists none held back for anyone who drives up.
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 · 12
What you actually pay
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rate for this season, $24 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 Sep 10, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
14 records · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 8 mapped sitesAll 14 records
The price is derived by CAMPANAC, not published per site: the per-night rate this campground publishes for each site’s own site type. 8 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.
| COLD | 004 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | yes | 75 ft | 806 ftBasin Brook | $24 |
| COLD | 005 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | yes | 75 ft | 811 ft | $24 |
| COLD | 006 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | yes | 130 ft | 939 ft | $24 |
| COLD | 007 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | yes | 174 ft | 958 ft | $24 |
| COLD | 010 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | yes | 193 ft | 1,171 ftBasin Brook | $24 |
| COLD | 012 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | yes | 89 ft | 1,021 ftBasin Brook | $24 |
| COLD | 013 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | yes | 89 ft | 1,006 ftBasin Brook | $24 |
| COLD | 014 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | yes | 107 ft | 912 ftBasin Brook | $24 |
| MANAGEMENT SITES | XXX1 | unnamed record | 751 ftBasin Brook | $24 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | XXX2 | unnamed record | 971 ftBasin Brook | $24 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | XXX3 | unnamed record | 884 ftBasin Brook | $24 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | XXX4 | unnamed record | 1,118 ft | $24 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | XXX5 | unnamed record | 1,177 ft | $24 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | XXX6 | unnamed record | 1,135 ftBasin Brook | $24 |
The agency files 6 more records here that aren’t sites for the night. It types every one of them MANAGEMENT rather than a campsite. They’re in the table above, marked for what they are, and none of them is counted as a site.
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
Basin CampgroundWhite Mountain National Forest · 0.5 miWild River CampgroundWhite Mountain National Forest · 3.8 mi
Hastings CampgroundWhite Mountain National Forest · 6.2 mi
Doublehead CabinWhite Mountain National Forest · 8.9 mi
Black Mountain CabinWhite Mountain National Forest · 9.1 miRattle River ShelterWhite Mountain National Forest · 9.2 miFrom Fryeburg, Maine, take Highway 113 north 15 miles to the campground.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Gorham, NH
Typical weather
Typical October night 37°F, day 59°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 10°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
Cold River is in New Hampshire’s 1st congressional district. Its representative, Chris Pappas (D), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: A+. See every public-lands vote →