CAMPANAC.Powered by public lands intelligenceMore Than Just Parks
The map
U.S. Forest Service · Shasta National Forest · CA

Panther Meadows Campground

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.
Get directionsWhat it costs, and the rules
Right now
Listed not openA database flag with no reason and no date
A night
FreeNo camping fee
Drawn from the record · 7,480 ft · 36% tree cover · water within reach · Bortle 2 sky
7,480 ftElevation
187 ftWater · an unnamed stream
4.8 miNE of Mount Shasta, CA
36%Tree cover
Bortle 2Night sky · 327th darkest of 1,201 in CA

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

Description : This is a walk-in campground located near timberline on Mt. Shasta at 7500 feet. There are 15 sites, all within a short walk of your vehicle. Tables, fire-rings, and vault toilet. Bring your own water or purify the creek water nearby. 3 day limit, per person, per year. No fee. No reservations. Self-register on site. Usually opens around July 1st, depending on winter snowpack, and closes November 1st. Features : Highest campground on the mountain with open views and vistas. There are two small sub-alpine heather meadows a short distance from the campground. Because of the fragile nature of the meadows, great care must be given by all who visit not to incur damage. In recent years, a major effort has been made by local tribes, volunteers, and the Forest Service to re-vegetate the native species and improve the trail system to minimize erosion.

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

Facilities

Toilets
Vault Toilets
“…of your vehicle. Tables, fire-rings, and vault toilet. Bring your own water or purify the creek water…”
Drinking water
None, bring your own
“…Tables, fire-rings, and vault toilet. Bring your own water or purify the creek water nearby. 3 day limit, per…”
Source: read from the agency description, shown above · Sep 12, 2026

Around the campground

On the water
Creek, Meadow
Source: Stated in the agency description

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
A nightFreeNo camping feethe agency’s fee record
A weekendNothingDerivedFriday and Saturday, everything includedours, from the lines above
Runs itU.S. Forest Servicethe agency’s record
Directions
Every line of the receipt · 4

What you actually pay

The sign priceU.S. Forest Service
Camping feeFree
No fee
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
A night, and a whole weekendDerivedNothing

Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s own record says there’s no camping fee, 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
Coordinate41.35501, -122.20181

Where it is

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

The weather

the next four days

Next four days, and the thirty-year normal

Forecast

Overnight45°Partly Cloudy
Saturday57°Sunny
Saturday Night41°Mostly Clear
Sunday52°Sunny

NWS forecast for Mount Shasta, CA

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

The land, and who answers for it

what threatens it · who answers for it

What threatens this place

watch
Roadless
Mt. Shasta C292 acres · 2 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
Mt. Shasta A676 acres · 2 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
Mt. Shasta B2,809 acres · 4 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 5, 2026

Who answers for this land

Panther Meadows Campground is in California’s 1st congressional district. Whoever holds it votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. See how its representative votes on public lands →

Our roster still carries Doug LaMalfa for this district and the current federal record doesn’t list them as sitting, so we’re not naming a representative here until the two agree.

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: U.S. Forest Service’s own recreation database flags it not open and publishes no reason and no date. That’s a flag, not a notice.
Listed not open: USFS EDW Recreation Opportunities, openstatus field: a not-open flag in a database, with no reason and no date published; read there since Sep 9, 2026. A flag, not a notice, so this page doesn’t call it a closure. · Oct 16, 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: 0.078 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 1,201 rated federal campgrounds in California · 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
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 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