Pine Creek Campground
- Right now
- Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
- A night
- $26From, per site
- Sites
- 26All of them booked ahead
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 11 notices
In the agency’s own words
Pine Creek Campground is located approximately 13 miles south of Livingston, and a few miles east of the Yellowstone River and Highway 89, in Montana. Visitors enjoy the area for its hiking and fishing opportunities in a beautiful natural setting. Keep reading
Recreation
Pine Creek offers anglers the opportunity to fish for whitefish, rainbow and brown trout. An accessible fishing dock is located within the campground. Creekside Trail is an accessible nature trail that meanders along Pine Creek for a half-mile in the campground. The Pine Creek Trailhead offers hiking and horseback riding. Pine Creek Trail climbs five miles up to Pine Creek Lake, a beautiful 32-acre alpine lake. A mile up the trail from the campground, hikers are awarded beautiful views of Pine Creek Falls.
Facilities
The campground offers several single-family campsites, as well as an OVERNIGHT GROUP CAMPING AREA (SITE 26) and GROUP PICNIC AREA (SITE 28) is available for DAY-USE ONLY . Tables and campfire rings are provided, as are vault toilets, drinking water and trash collection.
Natural Features
Pine Creek is situated in the foothills of the Absaroka Mountains in the heart of beautiful Paradise Valley. A forest of mature Douglas fir and spruce trees covers the campground. Contact Info For facility specific information, please call (661) 702-1420.
What the agency tells you
Bears frequent the area, all food must be stored in approved containers and secured when campsite is uoccupied.
An additional fee will be collected at the campground if the number of people listed on the reservation is exceeded.
No horses allowed in the campground.
Everything else this campground posts · 8
Firewood is available on site for $10.00 a bundle.
Click here for more information on the Gallatin National Forest
Don't Move Firewood: Prevent the spread of tree-killing pests by obtaining firewood near your destination and burning it on-site. For more information visit dontmovefirewood.org.
Reserved campsites will be held until check-out time on the day following your scheduled arrival.
GROUP PICNIC AREA (SITE 28) is available for DAY-USE ONLY.
No RV Dump Station is located in any of the USFS campgrounds managed by ExplorUS in the Custer-Gallatin National Forest.
There are NO Shower facilities available at this campground.
Camping fee covers 2 vehicles or RV/Trailer with tow vehicle. An extra vehicle fee of $9.00 is charged for each additional vehicle per night of stay. If you have an extra vehicle, it must fit on the campsite parking spur.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 26 · 1 tent-only, 1 walk-in, 1 group
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 20 ft
- Accessible sites
- 1
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- 25 of 26 sites
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…and campfire rings are provided, as are vault toilets, drinking water and trash collection. Natural…”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…are provided, as are vault toilets, drinking water and trash collection. Natural Features Pine Creek…”
- Camp host
- On site
- recreation.gov lists “Host”
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, River, Creek
- Backpacking
- Berry Picking
- Biking
- Birding
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Mushroom Picking
- Picnicking
- Stargazing
- Water access
- Wildlife viewing
- Night sky · 378th darkest of 501 in MT
- Bortle 2
No reading yet, book on recreation.gov
Every site here is reservable, and the record lists none held back for anyone who drives up.
No availability snapshot inside the last 36 hours, so this page draws nothing rather than ageing a reading into fiction.
Watch for a cancellation
Full? Watch it.
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.
Tell me when the season opens
Watch for the season to open
One email when the season goes on sale, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.
We check once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time the agency has that season on sale.
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
“The first two vehicles are included in the reservation fee and a $8.00/night fee for each additional vehicle will be collected at the campground.” · the U.S. Forest Service’s own fee record
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rate for this season, $26 a night, plus one $8 recreation.gov reservation fee for the booking. A weekend here means Friday and Saturday night, booked once. Optional charges (an extra vehicle, a second tent, a dump-station fee) are listed separately and aren’t in this total.
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 · 6
rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
28 records · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 26 mapped sitesAll 28 records
The price is derived by CAMPANAC, not published per site: the per-night rate this campground publishes for each site’s own site type. 26 of the 28 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| A | 001 Host | host pad | 695 ft | ||||
| A | 002 | standard nonelectric | 162 ft | 644 ft | $26 | ||
| A | 003 | standard nonelectric | yes | 95 ft | 653 ft | $26 | |
| A | 004 | standard nonelectric | 61 ft | 689 ft | $26 | ||
| A | 005 | standard nonelectric | 86 ft | 636 ft | $26 | ||
| A | 006 | standard nonelectric | 61 ft | 631 ft | $26 | ||
| A | 007 | standard nonelectric | 86 ft | 646 ft | $26 | ||
| A | 008 | standard nonelectric | 82 ft | 688 ft | $26 | ||
| A | 009 | standard nonelectric | 82 ft | 769 ft | $26 | ||
| A | 010 | standard nonelectric | 100 ft | 820 ft | $26 | ||
| A | 011 | standard nonelectric | 100 ft | 801 ft | $26 | ||
| A | 012 | standard nonelectric | 150 ft | 684 ft | $26 | ||
| A | 013 | standard nonelectric | 150 ft | 565 ft | $26 | ||
| A | 014 | standard nonelectric | 159 ft | 598 ft | $26 | ||
| B | 015 | standard nonelectric | 142 ft | 574 ft | $26 | ||
| B | 016 | standard nonelectric | 142 ft | 577 ft | $26 | ||
| B | 017 | standard nonelectric | 89 ft | 530 ft | $26 | ||
| B | 018 | walk to | 20 ft | 164 ft | 565 ft | $26 | |
| B | 019 | standard nonelectric | 89 ft | 457 ft | $26 | ||
| B | 020 | standard nonelectric | 105 ft | 390 ft | $26 | ||
| B | 021 | tent only nonelectric | 47 ft | 376 ft | $26 | ||
| B | 022 | standard nonelectric | 47 ft | 340 ft | $26 | ||
| B | 023 | standard nonelectric | 63 ft | 371 ft | $26 | ||
| B | 024 | standard nonelectric | 105 ft | 268 ft | $26 | ||
| B | 025 | standard nonelectric | 105 ft | 165 ft | $26 | ||
| B | 026 | group standard nonelectric | 146 ft | 147 ft | $75 | ||
| B | 027 | standard nonelectric | 116 ft | 60 ft | $26 | ||
| THRU | 28 Day Use | day use | 372 ft | $95 |
The agency files 2 more records here that aren’t sites for the night: 1 it files as day use and 1 it names a host pad. They’re in the table above, marked for what they are, and none of them is counted as a site.
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.
25 of 28 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Pine Creek Group CampgroundGallatin National Forest · 0.0 mi
West Boulder CabinGallatin National Forest · 11 mi
Mill Creek CabinGallatin National Forest · 14 mi
Snowbank Group CampgroundGallatin National Forest · 15 mi
Snowbank CampgroundGallatin National Forest · 15 mi
Falls Creek CampgroundGallatin National Forest · 15 miFrom Livingston, head south on Highway 89 for 9 miles. Turn left onto East Side Road and continue 6 miles. Go a quarter-mile past the town of Pine Creek and turn onto Forest Road 202. Continue 3 miles south to the campground.
From Gardiner, travel north on Highway 89 to the Pray turnoff on Mill Creek Road. Turn right onto Mill Creek Road and go a half-mile to the stop sign at the junction with East Side Road. Turn left on East Side Road and go about 10 miles to Forest Road 202. Turn right onto 202 and go 3 miles south 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 Pine Creek, MT
Typical weather
Typical October night 35°F, day 57°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical December night 20°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
Pine Creek Campground 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 →