Quartz Creek Campground
- Right now
- Listed not openA database flag with no reason and no date
- A night
- $23–$33Across the site types the agency prices
- Sites
- 4544 on recreation.gov
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 7 notices
In the agency’s own words
Quartz Creek Campground is tucked between Kenai Lake and Quartz Creek in Cooper Landing, Alaska. Boating, hiking, nature-viewing and fishing are popular pastimes at this family-friendly campground, where most campsites offer sweeping views of the lake. At an elevation of 500 feet, the campground is relatively flat with small spruce trees dotting the area. Keep reading
Recreation
Kenai Lake is the third largest lake in the Kenai Peninsula. It is over 20 miles long and 500 ft. deep. It boasts about 14,000 acres of water as well as one island the three remote campsites at Ship Creek, Meadow Creek and Porcupine Island. These can be reached by boat from the boat launch at Quartz Creek Campground. Fishing is also popular in the area. Rainbow, lake trout and Dolly Varden are found in Kenai Lake, with rainbow and Dolly Varden found in Quartz Creek later in the summer. About two miles east of Quartz Creek Campground, Kenai Lake becomes Kenai River. Kenai River is world-famous for its trophy trout fishing as well as salmon fishing. Rafting and drifting are both popular on the river. Many outfitters and guides in the area can help anglers understand local fishing regulations as well as increase your chances of fishing success. Kenai Lake and River, offer unparalleled nature and wildlife viewing. However, they are also very cold and conditions can quickly deteriorate from calm to rough. If you plan to venture on the water, always let someone know where you are, when you will return and wear your life jacket at all times.
Facilities
The campground provides a boat ramp to access the expansive lake. Quartz Creek offers 46 campsites for both tent and RV camping. Drinking water, flush toilets and picnic areas are provided at the campground. The west loop has parking spurs and firewood is sometimes sold on-site.
Natural Features
Chugach National Forest covers more than 5 million acres and is comprised of ice fields, alpine tundra, jagged mountains, dense forests, glacier-fed rivers and the Prince William Sound. Bears, moose, mountain goats and wolves call the area home. Contact Info For local information, please call (907) 522-8368 or call (907) 288-3178 for general information.
Nearby Attractions
Quartz Creek Road leads to Crescent Creek Campground, Crescent Creek Trail and eventually becomes the Old Sterling Highway. The bridge over Quartz Creek is a great place to view salmon spawning from late July through September. The Crescent Creek Trail follows the creek for six miles to Crescent Lake where Crescent Lake Public Use Cabin can be reserved. Grayling fishing is popular in Crescent Lake. More adventurous hikers can continue on a primitive trail another eight miles along the lake to the Crescent Saddle Cabin. Beyond Crescent Lake, hikers traverse another three miles of beautiful alpine wildflower meadows and pass Carter Lake to end at the Seward Highway in Moose Pass. The Old Sterling Highway is open to motorized use, and great for OHV enthusiasts and wildlife viewers. It leads five miles through the woods above open marshy areas from Quartz Creek Road to the Tern Lake Day Use Area. Observant hikers may spot wood frogs, moose, hawks, owls and bears. The Tern Lake Day Use Area has picnic tables, vault toilets and a salmon viewing platform. Tern Lake is a premier spot for bird watching and photography. Throughout the summer arctic terns, trumpeter swans, and many types of ducks, wading birds and songbirds can be identified. This shallow, marshy lake often has a perfect reflection of the steep surrounding mountains making it a great spot to enjoy nature and wildlife. Other popular trails in the area include the Resurrection Pass Trail which takes hikers and bikers on a 38-mile scenic adventure that climbs from 500 to 2,600 feet.
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
Season dates may vary due to weather, snow melt, wind damage, etc.
Limit 2 vehicles per campground
Everything else this campground posts · 4
Fires allowed in fire pits only
Fireworks and firearms prohibited
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
- 45
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 120 ft
- Paved pads
- All
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Flush Toilets · Vault Toilets
- “…tent and RV camping. Drinking water, flush toilets and picnic areas are provided at the campground.… / …Lake Day Use Area has picnic tables, vault toilets and a salmon viewing platform. Tern Lake is a…”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…campsites for both tent and RV camping. Drinking water, flush toilets and picnic areas are provided at the…”
- Boat ramp
- Yes
- Firewood
- Sold here
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, River, Creek, Meadow
- Biking
- Boating
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Wildlife viewing
- Night sky · 245th darkest of 280 in AK
- Bortle 3
No reading yet, book on recreation.gov
recreation.gov lists 44 of the 45 campsites the agency files here. The rest aren’t on its booking system, so a reservation won’t get you one.
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 · 13
What you actually pay
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rates for this season, $23–$33 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
45 sites · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 44 mapped sitesAll 45 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. 44 of the 45 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 001 | standard nonelectric | 55 ft | 73 ft | 134 ft | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 002 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 99 ft | 119 ft | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 003 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 73 ft | 160 ft | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 004 | standard nonelectric | 51 ft | 102 ft | 231 ft | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 005 | standard nonelectric | 42 ft | 102 ft | 218 ft | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 006 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 119 ft | 134 ft | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 007 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 80 ft | 130 ft | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 008 | standard nonelectric | 80 ft | 118 ft | $23–$33 | |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 009 | standard nonelectric | 50 ft | 105 ft | 274 ft | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 010 | standard nonelectric | 100 ft | 100 ft | 136 ft | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 011 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 100 ft | 146 ft | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 012 | standard nonelectric | 120 ft | 82 ft | 244 ft | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 013 | standard nonelectric | 48 ft | 82 ft | 279 ft | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 014 | standard nonelectric | 38 ft | 37 ft | 208 ftQuartz Creek | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 015 | standard nonelectric | 120 ft | 37 ft | 171 ftQuartz Creek | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 016 | standard nonelectric | 120 ft | 60 ft | 209 ftQuartz Creek | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 017 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 115 ft | 146 ftQuartz Creek | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 018 | standard nonelectric | 65 ft | 67 ft | 259 ftQuartz Creek | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 019 | standard nonelectric | 48 ft | 67 ft | 325 ftQuartz Creek | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 020 | standard nonelectric | 60 ft | 91 ft | 250 ftQuartz Creek | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 021 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 92 ft | 342 ftQuartz Creek | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 022 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 121 ft | 301 ftQuartz Creek | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 023 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 121 ft | 302 ftQuartz Creek | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 024 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 90 ft | 89 ftQuartz Creek | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 025 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 90 ft | 156 ftQuartz Creek | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 026 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 105 ft | 436 ftQuartz Creek | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 027 | standard nonelectric | 55 ft | 162 ft | 361 ftQuartz Creek | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 028 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 91 ft | 523 ftQuartz Creek | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 029 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 91 ft | 539 ft | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 030 | standard nonelectric | 50 ft | 59 ft | 479 ft | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 031 | standard nonelectric | 32 ft | 59 ft | 432 ft | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 032 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 75 ft | 449 ft | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 033 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 70 ft | 384 ft | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 034 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 75 ft | 386 ft | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 035 | type not stated | 70 ft | 197 ft | ||
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 036 | standard nonelectric | 70 ft | 88 ft | 149 ft | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 037 | standard nonelectric | 100 ft | 88 ft | 145 ft | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 038 | standard nonelectric | 38 ft | 95 ft | 11 ft | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 039 | standard nonelectric | 50 ft | 95 ft | 20 ft | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 040 | standard nonelectric | 100 ft | 129 ft | 144 ft | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 041 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 158 ft | under 10 ft | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 042 | standard nonelectric | 50 ft | 107 ft | 142 ft | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 043 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 133 ft | 53 ft | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 044 | standard nonelectric | 28 ft | 88 ft | 167 ft | $23–$33 |
| AREA QUARTZ CREEK CAMPGROUND | 045 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 88 ft | 245 ft | $23–$33 |
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 45 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Crescent Lake CabinChugach National Forest · 5.3 miCooper Creek SouthChugach National Forest · 5.3 mi
Trout Lake CabinChugach National Forest · 7.6 mi
Crescent Saddle CabinChugach National Forest · 7.9 mi
Romig CabinChugach National Forest · 8.1 miFrom Anchorage, Alaska, take Seward Highway to Sterling Highway south for 100 miles and turn onto Quartz Creek Road before reaching Kenai Lake.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Cooper Landing, 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
Quartz Creek Campground 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 →