National Park Service · Lassen Volcanic National Park · CA
Southwest Campground - Winter/Spring
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Information
EV charging station unavailable The Electric Vehicle charging station is non-functional. There is no timeline for when it may become available. Please plan accordingly.
Information
Juniper Lake Campground Closed The Juniper Lake Campground and day use area is currently closed for maintenance and campground improvement projects. Potable water is not available in the campground. The Juniper Lake Road (access to lake and trailheads) is open. Please…
Information
Visitor Phone Line Intermittent You may experience problems reaching park staff via the main visitor phone line which functions intermittently. You may email the park at lavo_information@nps.gov with general park questions.
Alerts: National Park Service alerts API · Oct 17, 2026
First come, first servedNo reservation, and none to be had: all 15 sites go to whoever pulls in first.
This is how it should work.
- Right now
- Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
- Sites
- 155 of them walk-up
6,720 ftElevation
793 ftWater · West Sulphur Creek
13.6 miSE of Shingletown, CA
5Walk-up sites
0%Tree cover
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there
In the agency’s own words
The Southwest Walk-in Campground is located on the east side of the Kohm Yah-mah-nee Visitor Center parking area. When snow is present, approximately November to May, overnight stays are only allowed in self-contained vehicles in the parking lot (walk-in tent sites are closed in winter). Regulations change and the walk-in tent sites are open when the snow melts, approximately June to October.
Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026
Facilities
- Toilets
- Flush Toilets - year round
- Drinking water
- Yes
Source: National Park Service and agency records
Around the campground
- Night sky · 162nd darkest of 1,201 in CA
- Bortle 2
- Fall color · reported 13 days ago, 38 km away
- Peak color
Source: VIIRS Day/Night Band annual cloud-free composite, VNL V2 2024 (Earth Observation Group, Colorado School of Mines), read at the published coordinate · Sep 8, 2026
Fall color: More Than Just Parks foliage tracker, joined to this campground by distance (38 km) · Oct 4, 2026
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.
Every line of the receipt · 3
What you actually pay
The sign priceNational Park Service
The National Park 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
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the phone number
Coordinate40.43675, -121.53313
The mapSee it on the map
The driveDirections ↗
The phone(530) 595-6121
The agency’s pageOfficial page ↗
Where it is
Also near here
Southwest CampgroundLassen Volcanic National Park · 0.0 mi
Manzanita LakeLassen Volcanic National Park · 6.6 mi
Manzanita Lake Group CampgroundLassen Volcanic National Park · 6.6 mi
Manzanita Lake Camping Cabins (CA)Lassen Volcanic National Park · 6.6 mi
Summit Lake SouthLassen Volcanic National Park · 6.9 mi
Summit Lake NorthLassen Volcanic National Park · 7.0 mi
Southwest CampgroundLassen Volcanic National Park · 0.0 miManzanita LakeLassen Volcanic National Park · 6.6 miManzanita Lake Group CampgroundLassen Volcanic National Park · 6.6 miManzanita Lake Camping Cabins (CA)Lassen Volcanic National Park · 6.6 miSummit Lake SouthLassen Volcanic National Park · 6.9 miSummit Lake NorthLassen Volcanic National Park · 7.0 miSource: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026
The weather
the next four days
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
This Afternoon66°Sunny
Tonight44°Mostly Clear
Sunday64°Sunny
Sunday Night40°Mostly Clear
NWS forecast for Mineral, CA
Source: National Weather Service, STO forecast office · Oct 17, 2026
The land, and who answers for it
what threatens it · who answers for it
Roadless country, and what’s coming for it
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
Southwest Campground - Winter/Spring is in California’s 1st congressional district. Whoever holds it votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. See how its representative votes on public lands →
Our roster still carries Doug LaMalfa for this district and the current federal record doesn’t list them as sitting, so we’re not naming a representative here until the two agree.
How we know
every fact on this page, and where it came from
Right now: National Park Service publishes no season and no closure for this campground, and it takes no bookings we can read. That’s a gap in the record and not a locked gate: the number below is the only way to be sure.
Elevation: USGS 3DEP elevation point query at this campground’s coordinate · Sep 7, 2026
Tree cover: NLCD Tree Canopy Cover 2024 (USDA Forest Service / MRLC), one 30 m cell at this coordinate · Sep 9, 2026
Fall color: More Than Just Parks foliage tracker, joined to this campground by distance (38 km) · Oct 4, 2026
Reported by: iNaturalist fall color observations, reported peak color · Oct 4, 2026
Cell signal: the Park 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: Mineral, CA, 0.9 mi NNE (a census designated place). Straight line.