Peterson Lake Cabin
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- Right now
- Taking bookingsSites offered on 30 of the next 30 nights read 16:19 UTC
- Sites
- 1All of them booked ahead
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 9 notices
In the agency’s own words
Peterson Lake Cabin was built in the 1980s and named after John Peterson, who started a placer gold mine in this area in 1900. The Peterson Lake Trail that accesses the cabin follows a former tram route for the first 2 miles, and remnants of the tram can still be seen. The cabin is open year-round and is one of Juneau Ranger District's most popular backcountry rentals. This secluded retreat offers the chance to enjoy beautiful scenery and a variety of recreational activities. The site can be accessed by float plane or by hiking, snowshoeing or skiing 4.5 miles from the Peterson Lake Trailhead on Glacier Highway. The trail has an elevation gain of 800 feet. Guests are responsible for their own travel arrangements and safety, and must bring several of their own amenities. Keep reading
Recreation
The Peterson Lake Trail is partially planked. Hikers can use this trail in warmer weather, but snowshoes and skis are ideal in winter. The trail winds through muskeg and old-growth forest, taking hikers past waterfalls. Cross-country skiing is good in winter, with an undeveloped trail to John Muir cabin (map and compass are recommended). Anglers can fish for steelhead, trout, coho and pink salmon in Peterson Creek below the falls. Visitors can use the cabin's skiff with oars, but they must bring their own flotation devices.
Facilities
This 12 ft. by 14 ft. cabin is pan-abode style and sleeps six people with two single and two double bunks. The cabin also has a table and benches, a broom, a propane furnace, wood stove and splitting maul. Propane is provided for the furnace. The facility offers an accessible ramp to the cabin, a wider hardened trail connecting the cabin to the new vault toilet and float dock. A picnic table is provided on the front deck, and a cooler box for food storage is attached to the side of the cabin. A fire ring is located outside. A dock is available for float planes and boats. Water, firewood and electricity are not provided. Water is available from a nearby stream, but visitors should be sure to treat water before drinking or cooking with it ( water safety tips ). It is recommended that visitors bring their own water supply. Visitors must provide their own sleeping bags, sleeping pads, cooking stove, lanterns or flashlights, cookware, plates, utensils, food, toilet paper, garbage bags, a fire extinguisher and fire starter. Visitors are also expected to pack out trash, empty the cabinets and clean the cabin before leaving ( click here for more cabin details).
Natural Features
The cabin sits on relatively flat land covered in tall grass. The front deck of the cabin offers views of the lily pad-covered lake and the surrounding forest-covered slopes. Peterson Lake is narrow and almost a mile long. The surrounding landscape is marsh and a forest of hemlock and spruce. Distant ice-capped mountain peaks can be seen from the lake. Deer and black bear are common to the area ( bear safety information ). A variety of waterfowl can be seen on the lake.
What the agency tells you
This facility is located in an extremely remote and wild area; before making a reservation, become aware of bear, water, and weather safety (including cold)
Recreating in Alaska can present both obvious and hidden dangers; please be aware of your surroundings and be prepared for extended stays due to occasionally poor weather
Water is not available at the cabin; guests must bring their own water supply or treat water from natural sources
Everything else this campground posts · 6
Please pack out all trash and food
Use of this cabin by a commercial operator, such as an outfitter or guide, is not allowed
Cabin is open to the public as a warming shelter from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Please collect down/dead wood for use in fire ring or wood stove
Click here for more information about Tongass National Forest
Don't Move Firewood: Prevent the spread of tree-killing pests by purchasing firewood near your destination and burning it on-site. For more information visit dontmovefirewood.org.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 1 · 1 cabin
- Hookups
- None
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…trail connecting the cabin to the new vault toilet and float dock. A picnic table is provided on the…”
- Drinking water
- None, bring your own
- “It is recommended that visitors bring their own water supply.”
- Firewood
- Mentioned
Around the campground
- On the water
- Waterfall, Lake, Creek
- Backpacking
- Cross Country Skiing
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Historic Sites
- Skiing
- Wildlife viewing
Full this Saturdayread 16:19 UTC
How full the weekend is nationally.
OpenBooked
The one site on offer is taken this Friday and Saturday. 1 is free on Mon, Oct 19. read 16:19 UTC Why the weekend fills and the week doesn’t
Watch for a cancellation
Watch this campground
One email when a night opens, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.
We read recreation.gov once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time a site in your window is free for the nights you asked for.
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.
We make nothing when you book. The link goes straight to the government.
Every line of the receipt · 15
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 · 5
recreation.gov availability, read 16:19 UTC · rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Sep 10, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
1 sites · the site map
All 1 sites
The price is derived by CAMPANAC, not published per site: the per-night rate this campground publishes for each site’s own site type. 1 of the 1 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| AREA PETERSON LAKE CABIN | J03 | cabin nonelectric | 52 ft | $75 |
OpenStreetMap has no toilet mapped within 1 km of this campground, so no site here carries a toilet distance. That’s a gap in the map, not a finding about the campground.
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions
Where it is
John Muir CabinTongass National Forest · 2.3 miAuk Village CampgroundTongass National Forest · 4.3 mi
Auk Village Campground4.3 mi
Windfall Lake CabinTongass National Forest · 5.0 miMendenhall Lake Campground5.4 mi
Sítʼ Yá Hítʼ CabinTongass National Forest · 5.8 miPeterson Lake Cabin is located 15 miles northwest of Juneau, Alaska. Year-round access is by 4.5-mile trail from Mile Marker 23.5 on Glacier Highway. Cabin can be accessed by float plane depending on conditions. A marked skiing trail connects John Muir Cabin to Peterson Lake Cabin in the winter. A GPS or map and compass are recommended.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Juneau, AK
Typical weather
Typical October night 40°F, day 47°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 27°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 · a letter you can send
What threatens this place
You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.
Who answers for this land
Peterson Lake Cabin is in Alaska’s at-large congressional district. Its representative, Nick Begich (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →
Who can change it · 3
Two offices, two different asks. The draft to the agency asks it to set aside a published share of the sites here for whoever drives up. The draft to Congress asks why that share is zero and presses for a published minimum at the campgrounds it funds.
- The member who votes the moneyNicholas J. Begich IIIU.S. Representative · Alaska, at-large
- Your senator, on the same appropriationDan SullivanU.S. Senator · Alaska
- Your senator, on the same appropriationLisa MurkowskiU.S. Senator · Alaska
Read the draft, or change the wording
For the camper who turned up, or tried to book, and couldn’t get in. Every draft is written from this campground’s own record (its agency, its unit, its site count and its own weekend) and the buttons above copy whichever wording is selected here.
Asks them to put the question to the agency in writing, and to press for a published minimum share of walk-up sites across the campgrounds they fund.
Subject Walk-up camping at Peterson Lake Cabin, Tongass National Forest, Alaska
Dear Nicholas J. Begich III, I’m a constituent in Alaska, at-large. I tried to camp at Peterson Lake Cabin, Tongass National Forest, Alaska, and couldn’t. All 1 sites at Peterson Lake Cabin are reservable, and the agency's own record lists none held back for somebody who drives up. On Saturday, October 17, the one site recreation.gov was offering there was already booked. 1,623 of the 7,639 federal campgrounds in this country still keep at least some sites for whoever arrives first. Peterson Lake Cabin keeps none, and that’s a choice somebody made rather than a rule. I’m not asking you to run Peterson Lake Cabin. I’m asking you to put it to the U.S. Forest Service in writing: why is the share of first-come sites there zero, and what would a published minimum share cost? Please press for that minimum at the federal campgrounds you fund. The people who open these campgrounds, collect the fees and keep the water running are seasonal positions. At GS-5, base pay plus the government's own 36.25% benefit factor, one costs about $47,414 a year. One percent of the $13.3 billion the USS Gerald R. Ford cost to procure would pay for about 2,800 of them for a year. Both figures are the government's own (a Congressional Research Service report and an OPM pay table), and I’m glad to send them. Sent about Peterson Lake Cabin (Tongass National Forest, Alaska) via campanac.com
Asks them to put the question to the agency in writing, and to press for a published minimum share of walk-up sites across the campgrounds they fund.
Subject Walk-up camping at Peterson Lake Cabin, Tongass National Forest, Alaska
Dear Dan Sullivan, I’m a constituent in Alaska. I tried to camp at Peterson Lake Cabin, Tongass National Forest, Alaska, and couldn’t. All 1 sites at Peterson Lake Cabin are reservable, and the agency's own record lists none held back for somebody who drives up. On Saturday, October 17, the one site recreation.gov was offering there was already booked. 1,623 of the 7,639 federal campgrounds in this country still keep at least some sites for whoever arrives first. Peterson Lake Cabin keeps none, and that’s a choice somebody made rather than a rule. I’m not asking you to run Peterson Lake Cabin. I’m asking you to put it to the U.S. Forest Service in writing: why is the share of first-come sites there zero, and what would a published minimum share cost? Please press for that minimum at the federal campgrounds you fund. The people who open these campgrounds, collect the fees and keep the water running are seasonal positions. At GS-5, base pay plus the government's own 36.25% benefit factor, one costs about $47,414 a year. One percent of the $13.3 billion the USS Gerald R. Ford cost to procure would pay for about 2,800 of them for a year. Both figures are the government's own (a Congressional Research Service report and an OPM pay table), and I’m glad to send them. Sent about Peterson Lake Cabin (Tongass National Forest, Alaska) via campanac.com
Asks them to put the question to the agency in writing, and to press for a published minimum share of walk-up sites across the campgrounds they fund.
Subject Walk-up camping at Peterson Lake Cabin, Tongass National Forest, Alaska
Dear Lisa Murkowski, I’m a constituent in Alaska. I tried to camp at Peterson Lake Cabin, Tongass National Forest, Alaska, and couldn’t. All 1 sites at Peterson Lake Cabin are reservable, and the agency's own record lists none held back for somebody who drives up. On Saturday, October 17, the one site recreation.gov was offering there was already booked. 1,623 of the 7,639 federal campgrounds in this country still keep at least some sites for whoever arrives first. Peterson Lake Cabin keeps none, and that’s a choice somebody made rather than a rule. I’m not asking you to run Peterson Lake Cabin. I’m asking you to put it to the U.S. Forest Service in writing: why is the share of first-come sites there zero, and what would a published minimum share cost? Please press for that minimum at the federal campgrounds you fund. The people who open these campgrounds, collect the fees and keep the water running are seasonal positions. At GS-5, base pay plus the government's own 36.25% benefit factor, one costs about $47,414 a year. One percent of the $13.3 billion the USS Gerald R. Ford cost to procure would pay for about 2,800 of them for a year. Both figures are the government's own (a Congressional Research Service report and an OPM pay table), and I’m glad to send them. Sent about Peterson Lake Cabin (Tongass National Forest, Alaska) via campanac.com