Lake Irwin
- Right now
- Closedrecreation.gov lists every site closed this weekend, read 15:51 UTC
- A night
- $24When it reopens, per site
- Sites
- 25In the agency’s record
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 7 notices
In the agency’s own words
Lake Irwin Campground is situated on the western banks of its picturesque namesake lake, approximately 9 miles from Crested Butte, Colorado. Visitors enjoy the area for its abundant trail opportunities, fishing and beautiful scenery. Keep reading
Recreation
Mountain biking and hiking are popular activities in this challenging, rugged terrain. Canoeing and fishing are favorite pastimes as well. The lake is usually so full of fish, one can see them rise to the calm surface.
Facilities
The campground offers several single-family campsites, some of which are accessible. Each site is equipped with a picnic table and campfire ring. Currently no water is provided, please bring your own.
Natural Features
The campground is set high in the Colorado Rockies at an elevation of 10,200 feet. Summer days are cool and afternoon showers are common. Nights can be chilly. Lake Irwin borders the campground on the east, and the Ruby Mountain Range lies to the west. Vivid wildflowers fill the landscape during July and August. Most campsites are shaded by mature Englemann spruce and subalpine fir trees. The Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests are located on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains. Together, the three forests cover 2.9 million acres in the central and southern Rocky Mountains, south of the Colorado River and west of the Continental Divide.
Nearby Attractions
The charming town of Crested Butte is a short drive from the campground. The former coal mining town offers a variety of outdoor activities, dining and shopping options and annual festivals, like the Crested Butte Wildflower Festival. Contact Info For facility specific information, please call (928) 537-8888.
What the agency tells you
Standard Single Family sites: Recreation Use Fee allows ONE camping unit ONLY.
Late Arrivals: campers are not considered a "no-show" until 24 hours after arrival date check in time. Our policy is that your site will not be released before that.
Extra Vehicles: Cannot be paid for in advance - upon arrival coordinate with the host for payment and where to park.
Everything else this campground posts · 4
FIRST COME FIRST SERVE sites must be booked in person. DO NOT call to determine availability, as they are only available on-site.
Don't Move Firewood: Prevent the spread of tree-killing organisms by obtaining firewood at or near your destination and burning it on-site. For more information visit dontmovefirewood.org.
Click here for more information on the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests
Opening and closing dates are weather permitting, please call 928-537-8888 for more information.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 25 · 9 tent-only
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 99 ft
- Accessible sites
- 3
- Pets
- Allowed
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Drinking water
- None, bring your own
- “…table and campfire ring. Currently no water is provided, please bring your own. Natural…”
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, River
- Biking
- Boating
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Night sky · 152nd darkest of 522 in CO
- Bortle 2
- Fall color · reported 14 days ago, 13 km away
- Peak color
Nothing to book until it reopensread 15:51 UTC
recreation.gov lists every site closed this weekend
Every one of the next thirty nights is in recreation.gov’s record and not one site is being offered on any of them. That’s a campground closed or not yet released for booking, not a sold-out one.
Tell me when it reopens
Watch for it to come back
One email when the agency reopens it, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.
We check the agency’s own record once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time it stops saying closed.
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.
Every line of the receipt · 12
What you actually pay
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 · 4
Why this page can’t say why
recreation.gov lists every site at Lake Irwin closed this Friday and Saturday night. The U.S. Forest Service has published no closure notice we hold, so this page can’t say why, and it won’t fill the gap with a guess. A closed night isn’t a sold-out one: the reservations its record still carries were taken before the sites were closed.
There’s no notice to quote and no reason to argue with, so this page offers you the watch and the list below, and no letter.
Open within 60 miles · 2
The agency’s own word that these are open, not our reading of a season.
- DexterSan Isabel National Forest · 45 mi · 4 sites
- Buffalo Pass CampgroundRio Grande National Forest · 58 mi · walk-up
recreation.gov availability, read 15:51 UTC · rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
45 records · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 25 mapped sitesAll 45 records
Toilet distances are OpenStreetMap’s, measured for 25 of the 45 sites listed. A site with no reading is unknown, never far.
The price is derived by CAMPANAC, not published per site: the per-night rate this campground publishes for each site’s own site type. 25 of the 45 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.
| LAKE | 001 | tent only nonelectric | 100 ft | 318 ft | 128 ft | $24 | ||
| LAKE | 002 | rv nonelectric | 40 ft | yes | 97 ft | 233 ft | 87 ft | $24 |
| LAKE | 003 | rv nonelectric | 35 ft | 88 ft | 209 ft | 77 ft | $24 | |
| LAKE | 004 | rv nonelectric | 30 ft | 131 ft | 112 ft | 204 ft | $24 | |
| LAKE | 006 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 67 ft | 263 ft | 146 ft | $24 | |
| LAKE | 007 | rv nonelectric | 20 ft | 16 ft | 273 ft | 200 ft | $24 | |
| LAKE | 008 | tent only nonelectric | 16 ft | 260 ft | 208 ft | $24 | ||
| LAKE | 009 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 85 ft | 216 ft | 229 ft | $24 | |
| LAKE | 010 | tent only nonelectric | 226 ft | 235 ft | 403 ft | $24 | ||
| LAKE | 011 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 139 ft | 64 ft | 446 ft | $24 | |
| LAKE | 012 | tent only nonelectric | yes | 66 ft | 23 ft | 309 ft | $24 | |
| LAKE | 013 | tent only nonelectric | 66 ft | 75 ft | 247 ft | $24 | ||
| LAKE | 014 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 122 ft | 192 ft | 133 ft | $24 | |
| LAKE | 015 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 84 ft | 308 ft | 42 ft | $24 | |
| LAKE | 018 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 118 ft | 354 ft | 124 ft | $24 | |
| LAKE | 019 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 84 ft | 239 ft | 44 ft | $24 | |
| LAKE | 021 | tent only nonelectric | 92 ft | 345 ft | 211 ft | $24 | ||
| LAKE | 022 | tent only nonelectric | 56 ft | 437 ft | 178 ft | $24 | ||
| LAKE | 024 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 50 ft | 494 ft | 137 ft | $24 | |
| LAKE | 025 | tent only nonelectric | 18 ft | 543 ft | 123 ft | $24 | ||
| LAKE | 026 | rv nonelectric | 30 ft | 18 ft | 552 ft | 107 ft | $24 | |
| LAKE | 027 | rv nonelectric | 99 ft | 27 ft | 457 ft | 94 ft | $24 | |
| LAKE | 028 | standard nonelectric | 99 ft | 27 ft | 448 ft | 119 ft | $24 | |
| LAKE | 030 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | yes | 109 ft | 429 ft | 208 ft | $24 |
| LAKE | 032 | tent only nonelectric | 88 ft | 295 ft | 45 ft | $24 | ||
| MANAGEMENT | XXX | unnamed record | 99 ft | yes | $24 | |||
| MANAGEMENT | XXX1 | unnamed record | $24 | |||||
| MANAGEMENT | XXX10 | unnamed record | $24 | |||||
| MANAGEMENT | XXX11 | unnamed record | $24 | |||||
| MANAGEMENT | XXX12 | unnamed record | $24 | |||||
| MANAGEMENT | XXX13 | unnamed record | $24 | |||||
| MANAGEMENT | XXX14 | unnamed record | $24 | |||||
| MANAGEMENT | XXX15 | unnamed record | $24 | |||||
| MANAGEMENT | XXX16 | unnamed record | $24 | |||||
| MANAGEMENT | XXX17 | unnamed record | $24 | |||||
| MANAGEMENT | XXX18 | unnamed record | $24 | |||||
| MANAGEMENT | XXX19 | unnamed record | $24 | |||||
| MANAGEMENT | XXX2 | unnamed record | $24 | |||||
| MANAGEMENT | XXX3 | unnamed record | $24 | |||||
| MANAGEMENT | XXX4 | unnamed record | $24 | |||||
| MANAGEMENT | XXX5 | unnamed record | $24 | |||||
| MANAGEMENT | XXX6 | unnamed record | $24 | |||||
| MANAGEMENT | XXX7 | unnamed record | $24 | |||||
| MANAGEMENT | XXX8 | unnamed record | $24 | |||||
| MANAGEMENT | XXX9 | unnamed record | $24 |
The agency files 20 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.
25 of 45 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Oh Be Joyful CampgroundGunnison Field Office · 4.6 miRiver Flats CampgroundGunnison Field Office · 4.9 miLost Lake Campground-Paonia RDGunnison National Forest · 5.6 miGothic Campground - Gunnison RDGunnison National Forest · 8.8 miGothicGunnison National Forest · 8.8 miFrom Gunnison, take Colorado Highway 135 north 28 miles to Crested Butte. Turn left on Gunnison County Road 12. Proceed 7 miles. Turn right on Forest Road 826 and follow signs 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 Crested Butte, CO
Typical weather
Typical October night 24°F, day 51°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 3°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
Lake Irwin 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 →