CAMPANAC.Powered by public lands intelligenceMore Than Just Parks
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U.S. Forest Service · Mt. Hood National Forest · OR

Summit Lake Campground

4Heads up4 fires, nearest 8 mi
Wildfire
Austin fire · 7.6 mi away · 12,888 acres · 98% contained · updated Oct 12, 2026
Wildfire
The Narrows fire · 17 mi away · 305 acres · 98% contained · updated Sep 16, 2026
Wildfire
Grasshopper fire · 21 mi away · 93,972 acres · 98% contained · updated Sep 30, 2026
Wildfire
Latigo Lane fire · 35 mi away · updated Oct 16, 2026
Fires: NIFC/IRWIN via MTJP wildfire tracker · Oct 16, 2026
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 directionsWhat it costs, and the rules
Right now
OpenInside the published season, our reading; a database flag says not open
A night
$21From, per site
Season
June 1Opens June 1. No closing date published.
Drawn from the record · 4,180 ft · 58% tree cover · water within reach · Bortle 3 sky
4,180 ftElevation
14 ftWater · an unnamed stream
19.9 miSE of Mount Hood Villages, OR
58%Tree cover
Bortle 3Night sky · 567th darkest of 770 in OR
Opens June 1. No closing date published.Today

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

Summit Lake Campground is a small rustic campground on serene Summit Lake. Some of the sites are walk-in sites, but they all offer fishing, swimming in the shallow lake, and visiting nearby trails. Opening date is dependent on snow conditions.

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

Around the campground

On the water
Lake
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, and a night costs $21 with nothing added. 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
A night$21Per site, fromthe agency’s fee record
A weekend$42DerivedFriday and Saturday, everything includedours, from the lines above
Runs itAlaska Recreational Management, Inc.A private concessionaire under permit from U.S. Forest Servicethe operator link
Directions
Every line of the receipt · 5

What you actually pay

The sign priceU.S. Forest Service
A night, from$21
The booking feerecreation.gov
Nothing. This campground takes no bookings, so there’s no reservation fee to pay.
What this campground addsits own record
Extra vehicleSee the note

“Camping : $21/night for single site, $8/night for extra vehicle Day use : $10/day/vehicle” · the U.S. Forest Service’s own fee record

What a stay costs
One night, fromDerived$21
A weekend, Friday and Saturday, fromDerived$42

Derived by CAMPANAC: the lowest per-night amount the agency’s fee record states ($21), and no booking fee, because this campground takes no reservations. A weekend here means Friday and Saturday night. Optional charges (an extra vehicle, a second tent, a dump-station fee) are listed separately and aren’t in this total.

How we know this receipt · 6
Sign price: Derived by CAMPANAC from the U.S. Forest Service fee record: a stated per-night amount only · Sep 7, 2026
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
What this campground adds: The U.S. Forest Service’s own fee record and notices for this campground, quoted verbatim. An extra-vehicle charge is set locally and appears on no national schedule, so it’s never assumed. · Aug 24, 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
Coordinate45.03267, -121.79075

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

This Afternoon70°Mostly Sunny
Tonight44°Mostly Cloudy11% rain
Saturday52°Chance Light Rain then Mostly Cloudy34% rain
Saturday Night35°Areas Of Fog

NWS forecast for Rhododendron, OR

Source: National Weather Service, PQR forecast office · Oct 16, 2026

Typical weather

Typical June night 41°F, day 59°F.

Coldest night of the open season: typical June night 41°F. Bring the bag rated for it.

80°32°20°

Daily high and lowDays with 0.10 in or moreOutside the published season

A normal is the 1991-2020 average for the month, not a forecast: about half of all Augusts are colder than the August line. The seven-day forecast above answers the other question.

Measured at: GOVERNMENT CAMP, OR (USC00353402), 19 miles away and 200 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

developing

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

Source: MTJP Threatened Lands map · Oct 4, 2026

Who answers for this land

Janelle Bynum, official portrait

Summit Lake Campground is in Oregon’s 5th congressional district. Its representative, Janelle Bynum (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: Today falls inside the season the agency publishes, and it has posted nothing else. That reading is ours. The U.S. Forest Service’s own database, though, flags it not open with no reason or date; the flag is named under How we know all this.
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 16, 2026
Season: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 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: 0.12 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 770 rated federal campgrounds in Oregon · 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: Rhododendron, OR, 18.2 mi S (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