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

Parkside Campground and Group Campsites

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
Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
Drawn from the record · 7,130 ft · 30% tree cover · Rock Creek within reach · Bortle 2 sky
7,130 ftElevation
223 ftWater · Rock Creek
10.4 miSW of Red Lodge, MT
30%Tree cover
Bortle 2Night sky · 232nd darkest of 501 in MT

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

.usa-accordion__button { width: auto /* 100%*/; float: right;} .my-container { display: flex; justify-content: space-between; }.child { padding: 5px; margin: 3px; } .right-align { margin-left: auto; } View this site on Recreation.gov Vea este sitio en Recreation.gov Parkside Campground is south of Red Lodge, along the banks of the Main Fork of Rock Creek. It is near the base of the switchbacks of the Beartooth Scenic Highway . Keep reading

Mount Maurice Trail (#6), Corral Creek Trail (#9), Bear Track Trail (#8), Lake Fork Trail (#2), Parkside National Recreation Trail (#103), Hellroaring Plateau Trail (#11), Glacier Lake Trail (#3), Sheridan Campground , Rattin Campground , Greenough Lake Campground , Limber Pine Campground and M-K Campground are also located in the Man Fork Rock Creek drainage. There is a 16 day maximum stay in all Beartooth Ranger District campgrounds. If you have questions before your visit, please contact the Beartooth Ranger District at 406-446-2103.

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

Around the campground

On the water
Lake, Creek
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
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
The U.S. Forest Service 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.
hour 1/2 price fees with Interagency Senior and Access Pass holders Group sites: A - max 50 people, 2 RV's
1-35 people= $65 36-50 people= $85 B - max 25 people, 2 RV's$65
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 this campground addsits own record
Extra vehicleSee the note

“$20.00 includes 1 driving vehicle $10 each additional vehicle $6 day use campground fee for over &frac12” · the U.S. Forest Service’s own fee record

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 · 5
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
What this campground adds: The U.S. Forest Service’s own fee record and notices for this campground, quoted verbatim. An extra-vehicle charge is set locally and appears on no national schedule, so it’s never assumed. · Aug 24, 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
Coordinate45.06061, -109.40375

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

Tonight42°Mostly Clear
Saturday64°Mostly Sunny
Saturday Night37°Mostly Cloudy
Sunday56°Mostly Sunny

NWS forecast for Red Lodge, MT

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

Typical weather

Typical October night 32°F, day 52°F.

Coldest month of the year: typical February night 17°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.

80°32°10°

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: MYSTIC LAKE, MT (USC00245961), 20 miles away and 586 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

Roadless country, and what’s coming for it

Roadless
Proposed Line Creek Prna389 acres · 3 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
Rock Creek100 acres · 3 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
Line Creek Plateau24,825 acres · 3 mi · inventoried roadless area

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

Source: USFS Inventoried Roadless Areas via MTJP Roadless Map · Jul 29, 2026

Who answers for this land

Troy Downing, official portrait

Parkside Campground and Group Campsites 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 →

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 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
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: 0.038 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 501 rated federal campgrounds in Montana · 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