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Bureau of Land Management · AK

El Aguaje Group Shelter

ReservableBookable through March 31; a peak season follows April 1 to September 30.
Book on recreation.govWe make nothing when you book
Right now
Taking bookingsSites offered on 24 of the next 30 nights read 15:48 UTC
Sites
1All of them booked ahead
Photos · Taos BLM

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there · 1 notices

In the agency’s own words

El Aguaje Group Shelter is located on the Wild Rivers Plateau, looking down on gorge where the Rio Grande and the Red River join. It is available from 11AM the day of your reservation until 10AM the following day. Keep reading

Recreation

The Wild Rivers Recreation Area serves hiking, biking (road & mountain), climbing, fishing, camping and Class V+ whitewater.

Facilities

The Wild Rivers Recreation Area is home to the Zimmerman Visitor Center and the Wild Rivers Scenic Byway. The Scenic Byway, along with a network of trails, connects five campgrounds on the plateau and two in the gorge with pit-toilets and trails. The Wild River Recreation Area currently is has no water.

Natural Features

The La Junta Overlook area is on the edged of the Wild Rivers plateau, looking down into the basalt gorge where the Rio Grande and Red Rivers join.

Nearby Attractions

The Wild River Recreation Area is the gateway to Bureau of Land Management sites the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument. It is close to the towns of Questa, Red River, the Enchanted Circle Scenic Drive, and approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes from Great Sand Dunes National Park.

Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

What the agency tells you

Rule

El Aguaje Group Shelter is operated by the Bureau of Land Management. It is located in an area with limited cell phone reception and limited amenities. At this time, the Wild Rivers Recreation Area has no water available. Please come prepared with the items you will need and remember to Leave No Trace.

Source: recreation.gov facility notices, quoted verbatim · Sep 9, 2026

Tents and rigs

Sites
1 · 1 group, 1 cabin
Hookups
1 electric
Accessible sites
None listed
Campfires
Allowed, barring fire bans
Source: Recreation.gov campsite records · Aug 23, 2026

Facilities

Drinking water
None, bring your own
“…River Recreation Area currently is has no water. Natural Features The La Junta Overlook area is on…”
Stay limit
14 nights
recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Source: read from the agency description, shown above · Sep 12, 2026

Around the campground

On the water
River
Biking
Birding
Fishing
Hiking
Skiing
Source: Recreation.gov activity records · Aug 23, 2026

Something open on 24 of the next 24 bookable nightsread 15:48 UTC

Every site here is reservable, and the record lists none held back for anyone who drives up.

OpenBookedNot reservable

Booking windowThrough March 31Bookable now through March 31, 2027, the end of the off-peak season. The peak season that follows runs April 1, 2027 through September 30, 2027; recreation.gov releases it on its own schedule, so check there before counting on those nights.recreation.gov
Max stay14 nightsthe facility record
Sites, a night, from$40From the rate schedule matched to 1 of its 1 sites. Bureau of Land Management publishes no campground-level rate we can read.derived by CAMPANAC
If plans change$10 to cancel$10 to change a reservationrecreation.gov’s schedule
Runs itBureau of Land ManagementBooked through recreation.govthe agency’s record
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.

Free forever, no booking kickbacks.
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’ll write once, when the season that starts Thu, Apr 1 2027 is open for booking.

Free forever, no booking kickbacks.
Book on recreation.gov

We make nothing when you book. The link goes straight to the government.

Every line of the receipt · 13

What you actually pay

The sign priceBureau of Land Management
Sites, a night, from$40
Derived by CAMPANAC from the rate schedule matched to 1 of its 1 sites. Bureau of Land Management publishes no campground-level rate for this campground that we can read, only per-site rate templates its own record matches to each site’s own type.
Group area, a night$40
Rates for the season the campground is in now, Oct 1, 2026 to Dec 31, 2026.
El Aguaje is open all year.
The booking feerecreation.gov
Reservation fee, booked online$8
One fee per reservation, however many nights you book, and it’s non-refundable. $9 if you book by phone, $3 in person.
Pass discounts only apply to the recreation (or use) fee for the facility. Other charges such as electricity or water hookups, reservation or other fees are not eligible for a discount.
What a stay costs
The agency publishes no nightly rate for this campground, so there’s nothing to add the $8 booking fee to. We won’t total a receipt with a number missing from it.
If your plans changerecreation.gov
Change fee, moving to dates outside your booking$10
Cancellation fee$10
Cancelling the day before, or the day of$10 + your first night
No-show$20 + your first night

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
Sites from: Derived by CAMPANAC from this campground's own priced campsites, using recreation.gov facility rate schedule matched to each site's own published type · Sep 14, 2026
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: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

recreation.gov availability, read 15:48 UTC · rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

The sites

1 sites

All 1 sites

SleepsUp to

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.

Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

Getting there

the phone number
The phone575-758-8851
The agency’s pageOfficial page ↗

The weather

Next four days, and the thirty-year normal

The land, and who answers for it

How we know

every fact on this page, and where it came from
Right now: recreation.gov is offering sites on 24 of the next 30 nights, which isn’t something a closed campground does.
Sites on recreation.gov: recreation.gov’s own month availability payload for this facility, asked for October 2026 and November 2026. It names 1 of the 1 campsites the agency files here, and every one of them carries an answer either way. A campground nobody has read carries no answer at all, never a no. · Oct 15, 2026
Cell signal: the BLM’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.