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U.S. Forest Service · Gunnison National Forest · CO

Gothic Campground - Gunnison RD

First come, first servedNo reservation, and none to be had: the sites go to whoever pulls in first.

This is how it should work.

Get directionsWhat it costs, and the rules
Right now
Closed for the seasonOut of the season the agency publishes
A night
$18From, per site
Season
June 13 – September 29Open June 13 through September 29
Drawn from the record · 9,670 ft · 15% tree cover · Rock Creek within reach · Bortle 2 sky
9,670 ftElevation
290 ftWater · Rock Creek
7.5 miNW of Crested Butte, CO
15%Tree cover
Bortle 2Night sky · 200th darkest of 522 in CO
Open June 13 through September 29Today

The place

the agency’s own description

In the agency’s own words

The terrain surrounding Gothic Campground is as rugged as it is beautiful. The mountain biking, hiking, motorcycle riding and four-wheel driving can't be beat. This older rustic site lies in a stretch of the Gunnison National Forest that is sandwiched between the Maroon Bells-Snowmass and the Raggeds Wilderness Areas. The area seldom gets crowded so it's worth the extra effort and time it takes to reach the region. The landscape is spruce/fir trees.

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

Around the campground

Fall color · reported 13 days ago, 27 km away
Peak color
Source: More Than Just Parks foliage tracker, joined to this campground by distance (27 km) · Oct 4, 2026

Nothing to book, just show up

One of 1,623 federal campgrounds where the site still goes to whoever pulls in first, and a night costs $18 with nothing added. Get there before noon on a summer weekend.

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.

BookingNo reservationsNothing to book, and no release date to wait forthe record
A night$18Per site, fromthe agency’s fee record
A weekend$36DerivedFriday and Saturday, everything includedours, from the lines above
Runs itU.S. Forest Servicethe agency’s record
Directions
Every line of the receipt · 6

What you actually pay

The sign priceU.S. Forest Service
A night, from$18
Night per camping unit$18
Firewood bundle .$10
The booking feerecreation.gov
Nothing. This campground takes no bookings, so there’s no reservation fee to pay.
What a stay costs
One night, fromDerived$18
A weekend, Friday and Saturday, fromDerived$36

Derived by CAMPANAC: the lowest per-night amount the agency’s fee record states ($18), and no booking fee, because this campground takes no reservations. A weekend here means Friday and Saturday night. Optional charges (an extra vehicle, a second tent, a dump-station fee) are listed separately and aren’t in this total.

How we know this receipt · 5
Sign price: Derived by CAMPANAC from the U.S. Forest Service fee record: a stated per-night amount only · Sep 7, 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: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

record Aug 24, 2026 · How we know all this

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

Getting there

the map and the coordinate
Coordinate38.98191, -107.00787

Where it is

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

The weather

the next four days · the thirty-year normal

Next four days, and the thirty-year normal

Forecast

Today60°Sunny
Tonight30°Mostly Clear1% rain
Sunday59°Partly Sunny5% rain
Sunday Night32°Slight Chance Rain And Snow Showers20% rain

NWS forecast for Mount Crested Butte, CO

Source: National Weather Service, GJT forecast office · Oct 17, 2026

Typical weather

Typical June night 34°F, day 70°F.

Coldest night of the open season: typical September night 31°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.

90°32°-20°

Daily high and lowDays with 0.10 in or moreOutside the published season

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: CRESTED BUTTE, CO (USC00051959), 8 miles away and 803 ft lower
Source: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, U.S. Climate Normals 1991-2020, monthly normals · Sep 8, 2026

The land, and who answers for it

what threatens it · who answers for it

What threatens this place

developing
Watch
Thompson Dividedrilling · 18 mi
Roadless
Gothic Mountain6,235 acres · 2 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
Treasure Mountain1,510 acres · 6 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
Raggeds27,059 acres · 7 mi · inventoried roadless area

You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.

Source: MTJP Threatened Lands map · Oct 16, 2026

Who answers for this land

Jeff Hurd, official portrait

Gothic Campground - Gunnison RD is in Colorado’s 3rd congressional district. Its representative, Jeff Hurd (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

Source: U.S. Census district boundaries and the MTJP Congressional Public Lands Score

How we know

every fact on this page, and where it came from
Right now: The agency lists it out of season. The season it publishes is the bar below.
Season: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026
Elevation: USGS 3DEP elevation point query at this campground’s coordinate · Sep 7, 2026
Night sky: VIIRS Day/Night Band annual cloud-free composite, VNL V2 2024 (Earth Observation Group, Colorado School of Mines), read at the published coordinate: 0.053 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 522 rated federal campgrounds in Colorado · Sep 8, 2026
Sky-glow model: Duriscoe, Anderson, Luginbuhl and Baugh (2018), a simplified model of all-sky artificial sky glow derived from VIIRS Day/Night band data, the National Park Service sky-glow model
Fall color: More Than Just Parks foliage tracker, joined to this campground by distance (27 km) · Oct 4, 2026
Reported by: iNaturalist fall color observations, reported peak color · Oct 4, 2026
Cell signal: the Forest Service’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.
Nearest place of any size: Mount Crested Butte, CO, 4.2 mi NNW. Straight line.
Nearest town: U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line 2024 places, measured by CAMPANAC to the town boundary; population is the ACS 2020-2024 5-year estimate · Sep 9, 2026