Warm Lake
- Right now
- Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
- A night
- $20–$40Across the site types the agency prices
- Sites
- 127 on recreation.gov
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 6 notices
In the agency’s own words
Warm Lake Campground is near the eastern shore of beautiful Warm Lake, at an elevation of 5,300 feet. Visitors enjoy boating, fishing, swimming, hiking and viewing local wildlife. Keep reading
Recreation
Warm Lake offers great fishing opportunities for cutthroat, rainbow, lake and bull trout. Boating, canoeing and swimming are popular activities. A developed swim beach is available less than a quarter-mile away, at Warm Lake Lodge. Billy Rice Swim Beach is just over a mile from the campground, on the north side of the lake. The area offers a day-use site for picnicking and swimming. A boat ramp is located at nearby Shoreline Campground. The surrounding area offers great hiking, mountain biking, horseback and off-road vehicle riding, and hunting. 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. For off-road vehicle enthusiasts, Telephone Ridge Trail No. 112 offers 20 miles of trails for all riding levels, with staging areas within the campground and up the road at Shoreline Campground.
Facilities
This small campground provides campsites equipped with a picnic table, campfire ring and grill. Vault toilets, drinking water and trash collection are provided at the campground, but electricity is not available. Roads and parking spurs within the facility are gravel. The lake is not visible from the campground.
Natural Features
The campground is situated in a scenic forest of towering, old-growth ponderosa pine, which provides partial shade in the campground. Chipmunk Creek runs alongside the campground. Summer wildflowers are abundant. A variety of wildlife including bears, deer, elk, fox, grouse, eagles, osprey, grosbeaks, whooping cranes and otters, lives around the lake.
Nearby Attractions
Warm Lake Lodge is located across the road from the campground and has a restaurant and small store with camping and fishing essentials.
What the agency tells you
Idaho OHV Safety Message
Bears frequent the area; please keep a clean camp and be bear aware
Click here for more information on the Boise National Forest
Everything else this campground posts · 3
Please click here for further information about the facility and recreation opportunities in the area.
Check out the forest's campground description for specific information to Fish Your National Forest
Don't Move Firewood: Help prevent the spread of tree-killing pests in our national forests by obtaining firewood near your destination and burning it on-site. For more information visit dontmovefirewood.org.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 12
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 60 ft
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…a picnic table, campfire ring and grill. Vault toilets, drinking water and trash collection are provided…”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…campfire ring and grill. Vault toilets, drinking water and trash collection are provided at the…”
- Boat ramp
- Yes
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, Creek, Beach
- Biking
- Boating
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Swimming
- Wildlife viewing
- Night sky · 168th darkest of 523 in ID
- Bortle 2
No reading yet, book on recreation.gov
recreation.gov lists 7 of the 12 campsites the agency files here. The rest aren’t on its booking system, so a reservation won’t get you one.
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 rates for this season, $20–$40 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
13 records · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 7 mapped sitesAll 13 records
Toilet distances are OpenStreetMap’s, measured for 12 of the 13 sites listed. A site with no reading is unknown, never far.
The price is derived by CAMPANAC, not published per site: the per-night rate this campground publishes for each site’s own site type. 12 of the 13 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
Measured shade is NLCD Tree Canopy Cover 2024 (USDA Forest Service / MRLC) read at the site’s own coordinate, 27% canopy or more, and only for the sites the agency gave no Shade value. It never changes the agency’s own shaded count beside it.
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 001 | type not stated | 1,199 ft | 308 ft | $33.97 | ||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 005 | type not stated | 1,243 ft | 466 ft | $33.97 | ||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 008 | type not stated | 1,412 ftWarm Lake | 310 ft | $33.97 | ||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 011 | type not stated | 1,434 ft | 389 ft | $33.97 | ||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 012 | type not stated | 1,345 ft | 479 ft | $33.97 | ||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | XXX | unnamed record | 35 ft | $33.97 | |||
| WARM | 002 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 72 ft | 1,305 ft | 386 ft | $20–$40 |
| WARM | 003 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 72 ft | 1,344 ft | 458 ft | $20–$40 |
| WARM | 004 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 144 ft | 1,326 ft | 580 ft | $20–$40 |
| WARM | 006 Double Site | standard nonelectric | 60 ft | 92 ft | 1,335 ftWarm Lake | 260 ft | $20–$40 |
| WARM | 007 | standard nonelectric | 36 ft | 92 ft | 1,390 ftWarm Lake | 343 ft | $20–$40 |
| WARM | 009 | standard nonelectric | 60 ft | 61 ft | 1,469 ft | 385 ft | $20–$40 |
| WARM | 010 | standard nonelectric | 60 ft | 61 ft | 1,428 ft | 408 ft | $20–$40 |
The agency files 1 more record here that isn’t a site for the night. It types it MANAGEMENT rather than a campsite. It’s in the table above, marked for what it is, and it isn’t counted as a site.
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
ShorelineBoise National Forest · 0.5 mi
Shoreline Campground and Group sitesBoise National Forest · 0.6 mi
Picnic Point (ID)Boise National Forest · 0.8 miSouth Fork Salmon River CampgroundBoise National Forest · 2.3 miSummit Lake CampgroundBoise National Forest · 3.5 mi
Stolle Meadows CabinBoise National Forest · 4.2 miFrom Boise, Idaho, travel 85 miles north on Highway 55 to Cascade. Turn east on Warm Lake Highway and travel 25 miles to Forest Road 579KA. Turn south and travel a short distance to the campground.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Cascade, ID
Typical weather
Typical October night 31°F, day 58°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 15°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
Warm Lake 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 →