CAMPANAC.Powered by public lands intelligenceMore Than Just Parks
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U.S. Forest Service · Routt National Forest · CO

Pines Campground

First come, first servedNo reservation, and none to be had: the sites go to whoever pulls in first.

This is how it should work.

Get directionsWhat it costs, and the rules
Right now
Listed not openA database flag with no reason and no date
Drawn from the record · 9,200 ft · 0% tree cover · South Fork Michigan River within reach · Bortle 3 sky
9,200 ftElevation
233 ftWater · South Fork Michigan River
22.8 miNW of Estes Park, CO
0%Tree cover
Bortle 3Night sky · 319th darkest of 522 in CO

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

Pines Campground is located 25 miles southeast of Walden in the Gould Area, adjacent to the South Fork of the Michigan River, a scenic mountain stream. It sits at an elevation of 9,200 feet. Pines Campground has 11 campsites. Each campsite offers a fire grate and picnic table. The campground offers a vault toilet. And has a scenic mountain stream. Due to the beetle kill campsites offer very little to no shade. Campers should come prepared with their own water as there is no potable water. This site was approved for a fee change in 2024 - Click here for more information

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

Facilities

Toilets
Vault Toilets
“…picnic table. The campground offers a vault toilet. And has a scenic mountain stream. Due to the…”
Drinking water
None, bring your own
“…come prepared with their own water as there is no potable water. This site was approved for a fee change in 2024 -…”
Source: read from the agency description, shown above · Sep 12, 2026

Around the campground

On the water
River, Creek
Fall color · reported 5 days ago, 22 km away
Peak color
Source: Stated in the agency description
Fall color: More Than Just Parks foliage tracker, joined to this campground by distance (22 km) · Oct 12, 2026

Nothing to book, just show up

One of 1,623 federal campgrounds where the site still goes to whoever pulls in first. Get there before noon on a summer weekend.

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.

BookingNo reservationsNothing to book, and no release date to wait forthe record
Runs itU.S. Forest Servicethe agency’s record
Directions
Every line of the receipt · 7

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.
Single site, $40/double site per day .$20
Exact cash or check only as there is no option for change back if paying cash.
NO CREDIT CARDS accepted.
Payment instructions are found on the kiosk.
The booking feerecreation.gov
Nothing. This campground takes no bookings, so there’s no reservation fee to pay.
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 · 4
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
Coordinate40.49120, -106.00712

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

Overnight28°Clear
Saturday56°Sunny
Saturday Night31°Mostly Clear
Sunday57°Mostly Sunny

NWS forecast for Grand Lake, CO

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

Typical weather

Typical October night 22°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.

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: GOULD 4SE SFSP, CO (USC00053446), 1 mile away and 200 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
Never Summer North3,694 acres · 5 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
Never Summer South7,638 acres · 7 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

Joe Neguse, official portrait

Pines Campground is in Colorado’s 2nd congressional district. Its representative, Joe Neguse (D), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: A. 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’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: 0.11 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 522 rated federal campgrounds in Colorado · 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
Fall color: More Than Just Parks foliage tracker, joined to this campground by distance (22 km) · Oct 12, 2026
Reported by: iNaturalist fall color observations, reported peak color · Oct 12, 2026
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 place of any size: Grand Lake, CO, 18.3 mi NNW. Straight line.
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