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

Rainbow Lakes 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 directions
Right now
Listed not openA database flag with no reason and no date
Drawn from the record · 9,950 ft · 40% tree cover · water within reach · Bortle 4 sky
9,950 ftElevation
116 ftWater · an unnamed stream
3.4 miNW of Nederland, CO
40%Tree cover
Bortle 4Night sky · 492nd darkest of 522 in CO

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

This campground is open mid-June through mid-September and located at 10000 feet at the end of the Rainbow Lakes Road and adjacent to the Indian Peaks Wilderness . This road is closed for winter and typically reopens in June. Before traveling to this area, check the Road Status Table . There are 18 first-come, first-served campsites that accommodate tents (on 14X16 foot tent pads) and small trailers. A maximum of eight people are allowed per site. Campsite 8 is oversized and accomodates up to 15 people. Campsites 15 - 18 are walk in sites for tents. Keep reading

Picnic tables, fire grates, vault toilets and trash services are provided at each campsite. 14-day stay limit. This campground does not feature drinking water, electricity, hook-ups, dump stations, nor showers. Please remember to bring water. Rainbow Lakes Campground is normally full for the weekend by Friday morning so plan to arrive early. No reservations are accepted. Click here for a map of this campground.

Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

Facilities

Toilets
Vault Toilets
“…for tents. Picnic tables, fire grates, vault toilets and trash services are provided at each campsite.…”
Drinking water
None, bring your own
“…nor showers. Please remember to bring water. Rainbow Lakes Campground is normally full for the…”
Dump station
Yes
Source: Stated in the agency description · Aug 23, 2026
Water, toilets and showers: read from the agency description, shown above · Sep 12, 2026

Around the campground

On the water
Lake
Fall color · reported 12 days ago, 8.1 km away
Peak color
Source: Stated in the agency description · Aug 23, 2026
Fall color: More Than Just Parks foliage tracker, joined to this campground by distance (8.1 km) · Oct 5, 2026
Official page: Rainbow Lakes Campground →

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 agency’s record
Runs itU.S. Forest Servicethe agency’s record
Directions
Every line of the receipt · 3

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.
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: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

rules read Sep 7, 2026 · record Aug 23, 2026 · How we know all this

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

Getting there

the map and the coordinate
Coordinate40.00911, -105.56892
The agency’s pageOfficial page ↗

Where it is

Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

The weather

the next four days · the thirty-year normal

Next four days, and the thirty-year normal

Forecast

This Afternoon57°Sunny
Tonight31°Mostly Clear
Sunday56°Mostly Sunny
Sunday Night33°Partly Cloudy2% rain

NWS forecast for Eldora, CO

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

Typical weather

Typical October night 26°F, day 47°F.

Coldest month of the year: typical February night 12°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.

80°32°0°

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: BOULDER 14 W, CO (USW00094075), 2 miles away and 122 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
Indian Peaks Adjacent Area34,712 acres · 6 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

Rainbow Lakes 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 17, 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: 0.82 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 (8.1 km) · Oct 5, 2026
Reported by: iNaturalist fall color observations, reported peak color · Oct 5, 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: Eldora, CO, 2.9 mi NNE (a census designated place). 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