Radeke Cabin
We don’t think it should be. Every campground should hold some sites for whoever drives up.Tell your representative →
- Right now
- Taking bookingsSites offered on 30 of the next 30 nights read 16:45 UTC
- Sites
- 1All of them booked ahead
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 10 notices
In the agency’s own words
Radeke Cabin once served as a summer camp for School of Forestry students at the University of New Hampshire until the mid 1960s. It was purchased by the Forest Service in 1969. The cabin is just off the Kancamagus Scenic Byway and easily accessible by car, but guests should be prepared to bring most of the gear and supplies needed to make their stay comfortable. Radeke Cabin offers an ideal year-round getaway for families or small groups. Keep reading
Recreation
A trailhead for the UNH Trail is located at the Downes Brook parking area near the Passaconaway Campground, which is just a quarter mile from Radeke Cabin. The 4.8-mile loop takes hikers to the 2,520-foot summit of Mt. Hedgehog, where they can take in views of the surrounding mountains and the Swift River Valley. There are many other hiking trails along the Kancamagus Scenic Byway. Anglers can fish for brook trout in the Swift River. Winter recreation enthusiasts will find numerous cross-country ski trails in the area.
Facilities
The cabin is rustic with limited amenities. Ten wooden bunks are divided into 3 rooms. A table, chairs, couch and a wood stove are provided, along with firewood from October 1 through June 1. An accessible pit toilet is located a short distance from the cabin. A campfire ring is outside. A wheelchair ramp is installed for accessibility. No potable water, running water or electricity are available. Guests need to bring their own water, as well as garbage bags to pack out their trash. The firewood at the cabin is only for the indoor woodstove; guests must supply their own firewood for the campfire ring. Bedding, cooking equipment, matches, kitchen utensils and emergency supplies like flashlights and first aid kits are not provided.
Natural Features
The cabin sits in forest of pine and mixed hardwoods alongside the Swift River in the Saco District of White Mountain National Forest. This is an area particularly known for its fall colors and mountain views. The forest is a birder's paradise, with 237 bird species. Common wildlife in the area include bobcats, coyotes, red and gray fox, deer, fishers, mink, pine marten, porcupine, raccoon, beaver and black bears ( bear safety information ). The resident moose are a star attraction for visitors lucky enough to see them.
Nearby Attractions
The Kancamagus Scenic Byway offers one of the most beautiful routes through New Hampshire's White Mountains, especially during the fall foliage season. A trip across the "Kanc" is a highlight for most visitors to the White Mountain National Forest. Rushing rivers, a covered bridge and scenic vistas are part of the 34-mile trip.
What the agency tells you
Please be aware that the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service is not cleaning this rental cabin between user visits. To protect health and safety for all cabin visitors, we recommend you clean all "high touch surfaces" when you arrive and before you leave. Cleaning supplies are not provided; you are expected to bring your own.
Water is not available at the cabin
Please carry out all trash and excess food
Everything else this campground posts · 7
This cabin sleeps a maximum of 10 people
Please sweep the floor with the broom provided before leaving
Please close and lock all doors and windows when leaving
No outside camping, including RVs and motor homes within a quarter mile of the cabin
Firewood is not provided from June 1 through October 1
Click here for more information about White Mountain National Forest
Don't move firewood: To limit the spread of invasive tree-killing pests, firewood from outside the area is not permitted. Some states have quarantines and may confiscate your firewood. Please help protect our forests from invasive species by obtaining your firewood at or near your camping destination and burning it on-site. Visit dontmovefirewood.org for more information.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 1 · 1 cabin
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 20 ft
- Accessible sites
- 1
- Pets
- Allowed
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Pit Toilets
- “…October 1 through June 1. An accessible pit toilet is located a short distance from the cabin. A…”
- Drinking water
- None, bring your own
- “…ramp is installed for accessibility. No potable water, running water or electricity are available. Guests…”
- Firewood
- Sold here
Around the campground
- On the water
- River
- Biking
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Historic site
- Hunting
- Wildlife viewing
- Winter sports
- Night sky · 11th darkest of 28 in NH
- Bortle 3
- Fall color · reported 13 days ago, 9.8 km away
- Past peak
Full this Saturdayread 16:45 UTC
How full the weekend is nationally.
OpenBooked
The one site on offer is taken this Friday and Saturday, and on four midweek nights after it as well. read 16:45 UTC Why the weekend fills and the week doesn’t
Watch for a cancellation
Watch this campground
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.
We make nothing when you book. The link goes straight to the government.
Every line of the receipt · 12
What you actually pay
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
recreation.gov availability, read 16:45 UTC · rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Sep 10, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
1 sites · the site map
All 1 sites
Toilet distances are OpenStreetMap’s, measured for 1 of the 1 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. 1 of the 1 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| RADEKE CABIN | 001 | cabin nonelectric | 20 ft | yes | 652 ft | 135 ft | $65 |
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Russell-Colbath BarnWhite Mountain National Forest · 1.5 miJigger Johnson CampgroundWhite Mountain National Forest · 1.7 miBlackberry Crossing CampgroundWhite Mountain National Forest · 6.1 miCovered BridgeWhite Mountain National Forest · 6.7 mi
Osceola Vista CampgroundWhite Mountain National Forest · 7.7 miFrom NH Route 16 in Conway, take NH route 112 (Kancamagus Highway) west for 14 miles. The cabin is on the right, a quarter mile before Passaconaway Campground.
From Interstate route 93 in Lincoln, take exit 32 for NH Route 112. At bottom of exit ramp, turn left (east) onto NH route 112. The cabin is approximately 20 miles on the left, a quarter mile after Passaconaway Campground.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Bartlett, NH
Typical weather
Typical October night 34°F, day 57°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 8°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 · a letter you can send
What threatens this place
You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.
Who answers for this land
Radeke Cabin is in New Hampshire’s 2nd congressional district. Its representative, Maggie Goodlander (D), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: A+. See every public-lands vote →
Who can change it · 3
Two offices, two different asks. The draft to the agency asks it to set aside a published share of the sites here for whoever drives up. The draft to Congress asks why that share is zero and presses for a published minimum at the campgrounds it funds.
- The member who votes the moneyMaggie GoodlanderU.S. Representative · New Hampshire’s 2nd district
- Your senator, on the same appropriationJeanne ShaheenU.S. Senator · New Hampshire
- Your senator, on the same appropriationMargaret Wood HassanU.S. Senator · New Hampshire
Read the draft, or change the wording
For the camper who turned up, or tried to book, and couldn’t get in. Every draft is written from this campground’s own record (its agency, its unit, its site count and its own weekend) and the buttons above copy whichever wording is selected here.
Asks them to put the question to the agency in writing, and to press for a published minimum share of walk-up sites across the campgrounds they fund.
Subject Walk-up camping at Radeke Cabin, White Mountain National Forest, New Hampshire
Dear Maggie Goodlander, I’m a constituent in New Hampshire’s 2nd district. I tried to camp at Radeke Cabin, White Mountain National Forest, New Hampshire, and couldn’t. All 1 sites at Radeke Cabin are reservable, and the agency's own record lists none held back for somebody who drives up. On Saturday, October 17, the one site recreation.gov was offering there was already booked. 1,623 of the 7,639 federal campgrounds in this country still keep at least some sites for whoever arrives first. Radeke Cabin keeps none, and that’s a choice somebody made rather than a rule. I’m not asking you to run Radeke Cabin. I’m asking you to put it to the U.S. Forest Service in writing: why is the share of first-come sites there zero, and what would a published minimum share cost? Please press for that minimum at the federal campgrounds you fund. The people who open these campgrounds, collect the fees and keep the water running are seasonal positions. At GS-5, base pay plus the government's own 36.25% benefit factor, one costs about $47,414 a year. One percent of the $13.3 billion the USS Gerald R. Ford cost to procure would pay for about 2,800 of them for a year. Both figures are the government's own (a Congressional Research Service report and an OPM pay table), and I’m glad to send them. Sent about Radeke Cabin (White Mountain National Forest, New Hampshire) via campanac.com
Asks them to put the question to the agency in writing, and to press for a published minimum share of walk-up sites across the campgrounds they fund.
Subject Walk-up camping at Radeke Cabin, White Mountain National Forest, New Hampshire
Dear Jeanne Shaheen, I’m a constituent in New Hampshire. I tried to camp at Radeke Cabin, White Mountain National Forest, New Hampshire, and couldn’t. All 1 sites at Radeke Cabin are reservable, and the agency's own record lists none held back for somebody who drives up. On Saturday, October 17, the one site recreation.gov was offering there was already booked. 1,623 of the 7,639 federal campgrounds in this country still keep at least some sites for whoever arrives first. Radeke Cabin keeps none, and that’s a choice somebody made rather than a rule. I’m not asking you to run Radeke Cabin. I’m asking you to put it to the U.S. Forest Service in writing: why is the share of first-come sites there zero, and what would a published minimum share cost? Please press for that minimum at the federal campgrounds you fund. The people who open these campgrounds, collect the fees and keep the water running are seasonal positions. At GS-5, base pay plus the government's own 36.25% benefit factor, one costs about $47,414 a year. One percent of the $13.3 billion the USS Gerald R. Ford cost to procure would pay for about 2,800 of them for a year. Both figures are the government's own (a Congressional Research Service report and an OPM pay table), and I’m glad to send them. Sent about Radeke Cabin (White Mountain National Forest, New Hampshire) via campanac.com
Asks them to put the question to the agency in writing, and to press for a published minimum share of walk-up sites across the campgrounds they fund.
Subject Walk-up camping at Radeke Cabin, White Mountain National Forest, New Hampshire
Dear Margaret Wood Hassan, I’m a constituent in New Hampshire. I tried to camp at Radeke Cabin, White Mountain National Forest, New Hampshire, and couldn’t. All 1 sites at Radeke Cabin are reservable, and the agency's own record lists none held back for somebody who drives up. On Saturday, October 17, the one site recreation.gov was offering there was already booked. 1,623 of the 7,639 federal campgrounds in this country still keep at least some sites for whoever arrives first. Radeke Cabin keeps none, and that’s a choice somebody made rather than a rule. I’m not asking you to run Radeke Cabin. I’m asking you to put it to the U.S. Forest Service in writing: why is the share of first-come sites there zero, and what would a published minimum share cost? Please press for that minimum at the federal campgrounds you fund. The people who open these campgrounds, collect the fees and keep the water running are seasonal positions. At GS-5, base pay plus the government's own 36.25% benefit factor, one costs about $47,414 a year. One percent of the $13.3 billion the USS Gerald R. Ford cost to procure would pay for about 2,800 of them for a year. Both figures are the government's own (a Congressional Research Service report and an OPM pay table), and I’m glad to send them. Sent about Radeke Cabin (White Mountain National Forest, New Hampshire) via campanac.com