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

Summit Lake 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
Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
Drawn from the record · 7,310 ft · 0% tree cover · Summit Lake within reach · Bortle 2 sky
7,310 ftElevation
1,117 ftWater · Summit Lake
23.3 miNE of Cascade, ID
0%Tree cover
Bortle 2Night sky · 132nd darkest of 523 in ID

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

Summit Lake Campground is a quiet retreat and a short distance from Warm Lake. The campground offers 3 campsites and the small but lovely Summit Lake is a treat. Natural Features: The campground is situated in a scenic pine forest, which provides partial shade in the campground. Lunch Creek runs alongside the campground and summer wildflowers are abundant. Recreation: The campground is near Johnson Creek and offering great fishing opportunities for cutthroat, rainbow, lake and bull trout. Billy Rice Swim Beach is a short drive from the campground toward Warm Lake. Keep reading

It is on the north side of the lake and is a fun place to go for an afternoon picnic and swim. The surrounding area near Warm Lake offers great hiking, mountain biking, horseback and off-road vehicle riding, and hunting. Check on the Motor Vehicle Use Map (MVUM) of the Cascade District for specific riding areas. The WeWuKiye (Wa Wu Kia) Trail No. 252 was recently built and can be accessed at Shoreline Campground. It is popular for hiking and mountain biking.

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

Around the campground

On the water
Lake, Creek, Beach
Source: Stated in the agency description

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 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: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

record Aug 24, 2026 · How we know all this

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

Getting there

the map and the coordinate
Coordinate44.64503, -115.58561

Where it is

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

The weather

the next four days · the thirty-year normal

Next four days, and the thirty-year normal

Forecast

Tonight39°Partly Cloudy
Saturday57°Mostly Sunny
Saturday Night35°Partly Cloudy
Sunday56°Sunny

NWS forecast for Yellow Pine, ID

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

Typical weather

Typical October night 24°F, day 55°F.

Coldest month of the year: typical January night 4°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.

90°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: STANLEY RS, ID (USW00004112), 46 miles away and 815 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

What threatens this place

critical
Roadless
Reeves Creek10,546 acres · 4 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
Whiskey4,964 acres · 6 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
Bernard20,897 acres · 8 mi · inventoried roadless area

You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.

Source: MTJP Threatened Lands map · Oct 5, 2026

Who answers for this land

Russ Fulcher, official portrait

Summit Lake Campground is in Idaho’s 1st congressional district. Its representative, Russ Fulcher (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. 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 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.
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: 0.016 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 523 rated federal campgrounds in Idaho · 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
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: Yellow Pine, ID, 21.8 mi SSW (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