Porcupine (AK)
- Right now
- Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
- A night
- $23From, per site
- Sites
- 33All of them booked ahead
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 7 notices
In the agency’s own words
Porcupine Campground is located in the Chugach National Forest in south-central Alaska near the town of Hope. Visitors have a prime location to watch windsurfers in the bay and spot Beluga whales from the scenic overlook. Keep reading
Recreation
Popular activities include fishing, hiking, whitewater rafting and gold panning. Gull Rock Trail offers excellent hiking, mountain biking and horseback riding. It extends for 5.1 miles along the south shore of Turnagain Arm from the end of the Hope Highway to a rocky peninsula. Snow usually melts in the area by early May and the scenic trail leads visitors over gradual hills with occasional steep sections.
Facilities
Porcupine boasts an impressive scenic overlook of Turnagain Arm. Firewood is sold on-site and the campground provides an accessible vault toilet, drinking water from a hand well, fire rings, a dumpster and picnic tables.
Natural Features
The remote campground, surrounded by a mostly birch forest, sits beside Porcupine Creek on the south coast of Turnagain Arm. Turnagain Arm is a branch of the Cook Inlet, the waterway that divides the Kenai Peninsula from the mainland of Alaska.
Nearby Attractions
The town of Hope is considered the best preserved gold rush town in the region. Campers can head to town to explore the quaint historic streets and try their hand at gold panning.
What the agency tells you
Be bear aware; keep all food out of site in approved containers or locked inside your vehicle and remove all food from area after eating.
Limit 2 vehicles per site.
An extra vehicle fee of $8.00 per day will be collected at the campground.
Everything else this campground posts · 4
Season dates may vary due to weather, snow melt, wind damage, or other conditions.
Fires allowed in campfire rings only.
Click here for more information on Chugach 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
- 33 · 11 tent-only
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 46 ft
- Paved pads
- All
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Pets
- Allowed
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…the campground provides an accessible vault toilet, drinking water from a hand well, fire rings, a…”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…provides an accessible vault toilet, drinking water from a hand well, fire rings, a dumpster and picnic…”
- Firewood
- Sold here
Around the campground
- On the water
- Creek, Coast
- Biking
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Water sports
- Wildlife viewing
- Night sky · 278th darkest of 280 in AK
- Bortle 4
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 · 14
What you actually pay
“An extra vehicle fee of $8.00 per day will be collected at the campground.” · the U.S. Forest Service’s own agency notice
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rate for this season, $23 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
34 records · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 34 mapped sitesAll 34 records
Toilet distances are OpenStreetMap’s, measured for 34 of the 34 sites listed. A site with no reading is unknown, never far.
The price is derived by CAMPANAC, not published per site: the per-night rate this campground publishes for each site’s own site type. 33 of the 34 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| AREA PORCUPINE | 001 | rv nonelectric | 26 ft | 214 ft | 905 ft | 235 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 002 | tent only nonelectric | 16 ft | 94 ft | 717 ft | 130 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 003 | tent only nonelectric | 16 ft | 94 ft | 811 ft | 184 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 004 | tent only nonelectric | 16 ft | 126 ft | 951 ft | 295 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 006 | rv nonelectric | 43 ft | 113 ft | 1,100 ft | 382 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 007 | rv nonelectric | 46 ft | 207 ft | 1,257 ft | 394 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 008 | tent only nonelectric | 44 ft | 113 ft | 1,172 ft | 362 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 009 | rv nonelectric | 36 ft | 164 ft | 1,333 ft | 200 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 010 | rv nonelectric | 39 ft | 202 ft | 1,556 ft | 187 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 011 | rv nonelectric | 38 ft | 194 ft | 1,525 ft | 29 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 012 | rv nonelectric | 36 ft | 202 ft | 1,751 ft | 251 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 013 | rv nonelectric | 28 ft | 174 ft | 1,825 ft | 312 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 014 | rv nonelectric | 25 ft | 209 ft | 2,028 ft | 500 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 015 | tent only nonelectric | 20 ft | 209 ft | 2,119 ft | 594 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 016 | rv nonelectric | 28 ft | 139 ft | 1,939 ft | 489 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 017 | rv nonelectric | 42 ft | 200 ft | 2,133 ft | 685 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 018 | rv nonelectric | 40 ft | 234 ft | 1,910 ft | 626 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 019 | rv nonelectric | 36 ft | 139 ft | 1,800 ft | 377 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 020 | rv nonelectric | 46 ft | 195 ft | 1,694 ft | 590 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 021 | rv nonelectric | 44 ft | 195 ft | 1,502 ft | 631 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 022 | tent only nonelectric | 32 ft | 124 ft | 1,501 ft | 324 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 023 | tent only nonelectric | 32 ft | 124 ft | 1,384 ft | 307 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 024 | rv nonelectric | 28 ft | 98 ft | 1,311 ft | 466 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 025 | tent only nonelectric | 38 ft | 239 ft | 1,264 ft | 728 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 026 | rv nonelectric | 26 ft | 98 ft | 1,231 ft | 451 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 027 | rv nonelectric | 20 ft | 123 ft | 1,070 ft | 544 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 028 | rv nonelectric | 24 ft | 123 ft | 986 ft | 422 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 029 | tent only nonelectric | 28 ft | 105 ft | 996 ft | 292 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 030 | tent only nonelectric | 28 ft | 105 ft | 896 ft | 187 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 031 | tent only nonelectric | 28 ft | 167 ft | 819 ft | 303 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 032 | rv nonelectric | 28 ft | 134 ft | 727 ft | 27 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 033 | rv nonelectric | 38 ft | 247 ft | 547 ft | 228 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | 034 | rv nonelectric | 36 ft | 134 ft | 661 ft | 154 ft | $23 |
| AREA PORCUPINE | Host Site 5 | host pad | 46 ft | 126 ft | 1,066 ft | 395 ft | $23 |
The agency files 1 more record here that isn’t a site for the night. It names it a host pad. It’s in the table above, marked for what it is, and it isn’t counted as a site.
25 of 34 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions
Where it is
Porcupine CabinChugach National Forest · 0.0 miCoeur d'Alene CampgroundChugach National Forest · 7.2 mi
Caribou Creek CabinChugach National Forest · 10 mi
Fox Creek Cabin (AK)Chugach National Forest · 14 mi
East Creek CabinChugach National Forest · 16 miBertha Creek CampgroundChugach National Forest · 19 miFrom Anchorage, go about 70 miles south on Seward Highway to the Hope cutoff. Bear right at 'Y' junction and continue 17.8 miles to the town of Hope. The campground is at the end of the road.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Hope, AK
Typical weather
Typical October night 32°F, day 44°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 17°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
Porcupine (AK) 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 →