Tenderfoot Creek
- Right now
- Listed not openA database flag with no reason and no date
- A night
- $23From, per site
- Sites
- 35All of them booked ahead
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 4 notices
In the agency’s own words
Tenderfoot Creek Campground unveils views of the surrounding mountains from every direction and offers campsites that face the edge of a glistening lake. Perched along Summit Lake on the Eastern Kenai Peninsula of Alaska, Tenderfoot Creek provides an ideal destination for fishing, kayaking, canoeing, hiking and wildlife watching. Campers may experience morning wakeup calls from loons or view bald eagles fishing in the clear waters. Impressive wildlife inhabitants include moose, brown and black bears, mountain goats, lynx and wolves. Campsites are nicely spaced along the eastern shores of Summit Lake. Tenderfoot Creek passes through the campground and surrounding forest includes spruce and hemlock. Keep reading
Recreation
The Summit Lake Trail heads south of Summit Lake and connects with the Resurrection Pass Trail, a wonderful 39-mile hiking and biking trail that climbs 2,100 feet of elevation, providing excellent views of the area. The lake is stocked with Dolly Varden and Rainbow trout. Winter recreation includes backcountry skiing, snow-boarding and snowshoeing.
Facilities
Tenderfoot Creek campers enjoy amenities such as drinking water, vault toilets, picnic tables, trash collection, fire pits and a boat ramp. The majority of campsites are pull-through and parking aprons are gravel. Firewood can be purchased onsite.
Natural Features
Summit Lake is a small cirque lake, or tarn, reaching a depth of 20 feet. This cirque was the beginning of a long-gone, alpine glacier. The surrounding terrain and unique mountain landscape is all glacially carved. Contact Info For local information, please call (907) 522-8368 or call (907) 288-3178 for general information.
Nearby Attractions
Visit Portage Glacier in the Portage Valley, a 14-mile isthmus that connects the Kenai Peninsula to mainland Alaska. Glacial remnants that can be seen today are Explorer, Middle, Byron, Burns and Shakespeare glaciers.
What the agency tells you
Be bear aware; keep all food out of site in approved containers or locked inside your vehicle and remove all food from area after eating
Parking at boat ramp is limited
For more information on Chugach National Forest, click here
Everything else this campground posts · 1
Don't Move Firewood: Prevent the spread of tree-killing pests by purchasing firewood near your destination and burning it on-site. For more information visit dontmovefirewood.org.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 35 · 8 tent-only
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 100 ft
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…enjoy amenities such as drinking water, vault toilets, picnic tables, trash collection, fire pits and a…”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…Creek campers enjoy amenities such as drinking water, vault toilets, picnic tables, trash collection,…”
- Boat ramp
- Yes
- Firewood
- Sold here
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, Creek
- Biking
- Boating
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Night sky · 252nd darkest of 280 in AK
- Bortle 3
No reading yet, book on recreation.gov
Every site here is reservable, and the record lists none held back for anyone who drives up.
No availability snapshot inside the last 36 hours, so this page draws nothing rather than ageing a reading into fiction.
Watch for a cancellation
Full? Watch it.
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.
Tell me when the season opens
Watch for the season to open
One email when the season goes on sale, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.
We check once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time the agency has that season on sale.
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 · 13
What you actually pay
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rate for this season, $23 a night, plus one $8 recreation.gov reservation fee for the booking. A weekend here means Friday and Saturday night, booked once. Optional charges (an extra vehicle, a second tent, a dump-station fee) are listed separately and aren’t in this total.
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
rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
36 records · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 35 mapped sitesAll 36 records
The price is derived by CAMPANAC, not published per site: the per-night rate this campground publishes for each site’s own site type. 35 of the 36 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 001 | standard nonelectric | 42 ft | 84 ft | 160 ft | $23 |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 002 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 81 ft | 192 ft | $23 |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 003 | standard nonelectric | 72 ft | 81 ft | 167 ft | $23 |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 004 | standard nonelectric | 66 ft | 84 ft | 99 ft | $23 |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 005 | standard nonelectric | 52 ft | 46 ft | 149 ft | $23 |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 006 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 92 ft | 62 ft | $23 |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 007 | standard nonelectric | 80 ft | 46 ft | 150 ft | $23 |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 008 | standard nonelectric | 42 ft | 79 ft | 53 ft | $23 |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 009 | standard nonelectric | 34 ft | 80 ft | 212 ft | $23 |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 010 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 64 ft | 102 ft | $23 |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 011 | standard nonelectric | 38 ft | 97 ft | 97 ft | $23 |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 012 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 120 ft | 116 ft | $23 |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 013 | standard nonelectric | 100 ft | 97 ft | 185 ft | $23 |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 014 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 140 ft | 75 ft | $23 |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 015 | tent only nonelectric | 166 ft | under 10 ftTenderfoot Creek | $23 | |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 016 | tent only nonelectric | 169 ft | 103 ftTenderfoot Creek | $23 | |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 017 | tent only nonelectric | 123 ft | 111 ft | $23 | |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 018 | tent only nonelectric | 123 ft | 138 ft | $23 | |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 019 | tent only nonelectric | 114 ft | 187 ft | $23 | |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 020 | tent only nonelectric | 114 ft | 284 ft | $23 | |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 021 | tent only nonelectric | 154 ft | 305 ftTenderfoot Creek | $23 | |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 022 | tent only nonelectric | 101 ft | 46 ftTenderfoot Creek | $23 | |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 023 | standard nonelectric | 65 ft | 128 ft | 137 ftTenderfoot Creek | $23 |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 024 | standard nonelectric | 92 ft | 101 ft | under 10 ftTenderfoot Creek | $23 |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 025 | standard nonelectric | 28 ft | 74 ft | 101 ftTenderfoot Creek | $23 |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 026 | standard nonelectric | 58 ft | 104 ft | 329 ft | $23 |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 027 | standard nonelectric | 38 ft | 74 ft | 167 ftTenderfoot Creek | $23 |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 028 | standard nonelectric | 42 ft | 59 ft | 225 ftTenderfoot Creek | $23 |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 029 | standard nonelectric | 60 ft | 59 ft | 277 ftTenderfoot Creek | $23 |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 030 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 107 ft | 368 ftTenderfoot Creek | $23 |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 031 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 98 ft | 305 ft | $23 |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 032 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 98 ft | 395 ft | $23 |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 033 | standard nonelectric | 48 ft | 124 ft | 245 ft | $23 |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 034 | standard nonelectric | 27 ft | 106 ft | 415 ft | $23 |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | 035 | standard nonelectric | 48 ft | 124 ft | 125 ft | $23 |
| AREA TENDERFOOT CREEK | HOST | host pad | 86 ft | $23 |
The agency files 1 more record here that isn’t a site for the night. It names it a host pad. It’s in the table above, marked for what it is, and it isn’t counted as a site.
OpenStreetMap has no toilet mapped within 1 km of this campground, so no site here carries a toilet distance. That’s a gap in the map, not a finding about the campground.
25 of 36 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Devils Pass CabinChugach National Forest · 8.7 mi
Granite CreekChugach National Forest · 9.2 mi
Fox Creek Cabin (AK)Chugach National Forest · 9.7 mi
East Creek CabinChugach National Forest · 9.8 mi
Crescent Lake CabinChugach National Forest · 11 miBertha Creek CampgroundChugach National Forest · 11 miFrom Anchorage, go south on Seward Highway approximately 81 miles to Summit Lake. Turn at milepost 46 before Summit Lake Lodge.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Moose Pass, AK
Typical weather
Typical October night 31°F, day 41°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 16°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
What threatens this place
You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.
Who answers for this land
Tenderfoot Creek is in Alaska’s at-large congressional district. Its representative, Nick Begich (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →