Ptarmigan Creek
- Right now
- Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
- A night
- $19From, per site
- Sites
- 13All of them booked ahead
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 3 notices
In the agency’s own words
Ptarmigan Creek is a small, peaceful campground with incredible views of the Chugach Mountains. Nestled beside Ptarmigan Creek and a short walk from Kenai Lake, the campground creates an ideal location for avid wildlife enthusiasts, hikers and anglers. Miles of hiking and biking trails weave throughout the area, and moose, brown and black bear, sheep and goats can be found across a large part of the forest. Keep reading
Recreation
From late August to early September campers can view red salmon spawning in the creek from Ptarmigan Creek's fish viewing platform. Fishing is a popular pastime, and Dolly Varden and rainbow trout are frequent catches. The Ptarmigan Lake Trail takes hikers along the shore of the turquoise lake and inclines up through meadows, brush and forest.
Facilities
Campground amenities include drinking water, vault toilets, picnic tables, campfire rings and dumpsters. No RV hookups are available but firewood is sold on-site. Parking aprons are gravel.
Natural Features
The campground sits in a wooded area at 470 feet elevation along Ptarmigan Creek. Campsites are shaded by spruce and paper birch, and mountain views are all around. The campground is part of the Kenai Peninsula in the western part of Chugach National Forest. A largely alpine region with miles of fishing streams and remote mountain peaks, Chugach extends across more than 5 million acres of arid tundra wilderness, rugged mountains, deep fjords and the Prince William Sound. Contact Info For local information, please call (907) 522-8368 or call (907) 288-3178 for general information.
Nearby Attractions
National Historic Iditarod Trail.
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
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
- 13
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 85 ft
- Accessible sites
- None listed
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…amenities include drinking water, vault toilets, picnic tables, campfire rings and dumpsters. No RV…”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…Facilities Campground amenities include drinking water, vault toilets, picnic tables, campfire rings and…”
- Firewood
- Sold here
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, Creek, Meadow
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Wildlife viewing
- Night sky · 228th darkest of 280 in AK
- 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 · 12
What you actually pay
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rate for this season, $19 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 · 5
rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
17 records · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 13 mapped sitesAll 17 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. 13 of the 17 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
Measured shade is NLCD Tree Canopy Cover 2024 (USDA Forest Service / MRLC) read at the site’s own coordinate, 27% canopy or more, and only for the sites the agency gave no Shade value. It never changes the agency’s own shaded count beside it.
| AREA PTARMIGAN CREEK | XXX | unnamed record | 35 ft | $19 | ||
| AREA PTARMIGAN CREEK | XXX1 | unnamed record | $19 | |||
| AREA PTARMIGAN CREEK | XXX2 | unnamed record | $19 | |||
| AREA PTARMIGAN CREEK | XXX3 | unnamed record | $19 | |||
| PTAR | 001 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 117 ft | 463 ft | $19 |
| PTAR | 002 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 117 ft | 423 ft | $19 |
| PTAR | 003 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 147 ft | 279 ft | $19 |
| PTAR | 004 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 108 ft | 282 ft | $19 |
| PTAR | 005 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 139 ft | 187 ft | $19 |
| PTAR | 006 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 108 ft | 242 ft | $19 |
| PTAR | 007 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 82 ft | 222 ft | $19 |
| PTAR | 008 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 60 ft | 232 ft | $19 |
| PTAR | 009 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 60 ft | 285 ft | $19 |
| PTAR | 010 | standard nonelectric | 85 ft | 114 ft | 358 ft | $19 |
| PTAR | 011 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 122 ft | 449 ft | $19 |
| PTAR | 012 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 132 ft | 365 ft | $19 |
| PTAR | 014 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 132 ft | 242 ft | $19 |
The agency files 4 more records here that aren’t sites for the night. It types every one of them MANAGEMENT rather than a campsite. They’re in the table above, marked for what they are, and none of them is counted as a site.
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions
Where it is
Trail River CabinChugach National Forest · 0.8 mi
Trail RiverChugach National Forest · 0.9 miPrimrose CampgroundChugach National Forest · 4.6 mi
Crescent Saddle CabinChugach National Forest · 5.6 mi
Crescent Lake CabinChugach National Forest · 8.7 mi
Lower Paradise Lake CabinChugach National Forest · 11 miFrom Anchorage, go south on Seward Highway to Crown Point, approximately 100 miles. The campground is located at Milepost 23.1.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Crown Point, AK
Typical weather
Typical October night 31°F, day 41°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 16°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
Ptarmigan Creek 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 →