Bureau of Land Management · Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument · MT
Gist Bottom Recreation Area
The agency doesn’t say how you get a siteIts record carries no access type, so treat it as a place to phone before you drive.
- Right now
- Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
2,320 ftElevation
140 ftWater · Missouri River
18.9 miSW of Hays, MT
0%Tree cover
Bortle 1Night sky · 5th darkest of 501 in MT
Phone before you drive
recreation.gov publishes no availability for a campground you can’t reserve, so there’s no thirty-night reading to draw here. The season bar above is what the agency does publish.
Booking window6 months outBooking opens 6 months ahead; today unlocks arrivals through April 16, 2027. The agency publishes no reservable season in the record we hold, so the window may close earlier than that.recreation.gov
Runs itBureau of Land Managementthe agency’s record
Every line of the receipt · 3
What you actually pay
The sign priceBureau of Land Management
The Bureau of Land Management publishes no per-night rate for this campground that we can read, so there’s no sign price to print. That’s a gap in the record, not a free campground.
The booking feerecreation.gov
We hold no recreation.gov booking record for this campground, so we can’t say whether a booking fee applies.
What a stay costs
The agency publishes no nightly rate for this campground, so there’s no total to show.
How we know this receipt · 4
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: BLM National Recreation Sites · Aug 24, 2026
record Aug 24, 2026 · How we know all this
Getting there
the map and the coordinate
Where it is
Also near hereWoodhawk Recreation AreaUpper Missouri River Breaks National Monument · 5.1 mi
Montana Gulch CampgroundMalta Field Office · 19 mi
James Kipp Campground19 miJames Kipp Recreation Area - UMRBNMUpper Missouri River Breaks National Monument · 19 miCamp Creek CampgroundMalta Field Office · 25 miJudith LandingUpper Missouri River Breaks National Monument · 29 mi
Montana Gulch CampgroundMalta Field Office · 19 miJames Kipp Campground19 miJames Kipp Recreation Area - UMRBNMUpper Missouri River Breaks National Monument · 19 miCamp Creek CampgroundMalta Field Office · 25 miJudith LandingUpper Missouri River Breaks National Monument · 29 miSource: BLM National Recreation Sites · Aug 24, 2026
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
This Afternoon64°Sunny
Tonight40°Partly Cloudy
Saturday77°Mostly Sunny
Saturday Night40°Partly Cloudy
NWS forecast for Hays, MT
Source: National Weather Service, TFX forecast office · Oct 16, 2026
Typical weather
Typical October night 32°F, day 60°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.
100°32°0°
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.
Measured at: ROY 8 NE, MT (USC00247228), 23 miles away and 765 ft higher
The land, and who answers for it
who answers for it
Who answers for this land
Gist Bottom Recreation Area is in Montana’s 2nd congressional district. Its representative, Troy Downing (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →
How we know
every fact on this page, and where it came from
Right now: Bureau of Land Management publishes no season and no closure for this campground, and it takes no bookings we can read. That’s a gap in the record and not a locked gate.
Elevation: USGS 3DEP elevation point query at this campground’s coordinate · Sep 7, 2026
Tree cover: NLCD Tree Canopy Cover 2024 (USDA Forest Service / MRLC), one 30 m cell at this coordinate · Sep 9, 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.