Williwaw Campground
- Right now
- Listed not openA database flag with no reason and no date
- A night
- $23–$33Across the site types the agency prices
- Sites
- 19All of them booked ahead
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 3 notices
In the agency’s own words
Williwaw Campground, an idyllic area, sits beside Williwaw Creek near the town of Girdwood, Alaska. The campground boasts prime fishing, hiking and wildlife watching all within the Portage Valley. Next to the campground is the Williwaw Salmon Viewing Area, a top-notch spot for salmon viewing. In August, visitors can see these fish spawning in impressive numbers through the translucent waters. The area is a great place to view numerous glaciated valleys and the Portage Glacier. Over the past 80 years, the glacier calved large icebergs into Portage Lake, located just east of the campground. Keep reading
Recreation
Wildlife viewing includes moose, brown and black bears, mountain goats, lynx, bald eagles and wolves. The Williwaw Nature Trail can be reached from the campground. It heads to the Williwaw Fish Viewing Platform, passes under the highway bridge and follows Williwaw Creek to a series of ponds. The trail then connects to the Trail of Blue Ice, which accesses the Begich, Boggs Visitor Center. The Trail of Blue Ice is also popular among mountain bikers.
Facilities
Drinking water from hand pumps, vault toilets, picnic tables and a parking area are provided at Williwaw Campground. Campsites are nicely separated, but no electric hookups are available.
Natural Features
The campground sits in the Portage Valley of the eastern Kenai Peninsula in the Chugach National Forest. The Forest, spanning 5,361,803 acres is comprised of arid tundra wilderness, jagged mountains, deep fjords and glacier-fed rivers that surround the Prince William Sound.
Nearby Attractions
Consider visiting the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, Portage Glacier, the town of Whittier and Byron Glacier. Contact Info For local information, please call (907) 522-8368 or call (907) 288-3178 for general information.
What the agency tells you
Be bear aware; keep all food out of sight in approved containers or locked inside your vehicle and remove all food from area after eating
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.
For more information on Chugach National Forest, click here
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 19
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 145 ft
- Accessible sites
- None listed
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…Drinking water from hand pumps, vault toilets, picnic tables and a parking area are provided at…”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…among mountain bikers. Facilities Drinking water from hand pumps, vault toilets, picnic tables and a…”
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, River, Creek
- Biking
- Hiking
- Wildlife viewing
- Night sky · 254th 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 · 14
What you actually pay
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rates for this season, $23–$33 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
52 records · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 19 mapped sitesAll 52 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. 19 of the 52 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.
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX10 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX11 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX12 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX13 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX14 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX15 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX16 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX17 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX18 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX19 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX20 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX21 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX22 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX23 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX24 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX25 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX26 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX27 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX28 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX29 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX30 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX31 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX32 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX33 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX34 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX35 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX36 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX37 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX5 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX6 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX7 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX8 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| AREA WILLIWAW CAMPGROUND | XXX9 | unnamed record | $33 | |||
| DBLS | 020 | rv nonelectric | 53 ft | 183 ft | 123 ft | $23–$33 |
| DBLS | 029 | rv nonelectric | 65 ft | 80 ft | 112 ft | $23–$33 |
| DBLS | 030 | rv nonelectric | 131 ft | 195 ft | 120 ft | $23–$33 |
| DBLS | 034 | rv nonelectric | 62 ft | 195 ft | 181 ft | $23–$33 |
| WILL | 006 | standard nonelectric | 128 ft | 72 ft | 227 ft | $23 |
| WILL | 007 | standard nonelectric | 61 ft | 72 ft | 299 ft | $23 |
| WILL | 008 | rv nonelectric | 56 ft | 51 ft | 295 ft | $23–$33 |
| WILL | 009 | standard nonelectric | 57 ft | 51 ft | 343 ft | $23 |
| WILL | 010 | standard nonelectric | 59 ft | 130 ft | 381 ft | $23 |
| WILL | 011 | standard nonelectric | 131 ft | 130 ft | 382 ft | $23 |
| WILL | 012 | standard nonelectric | 58 ft | 93 ft | 340 ft | $23 |
| WILL | 013 | standard nonelectric | 56 ft | 93 ft | 247 ft | $23 |
| WILL | 016 | standard nonelectric | 144 ft | 151 ft | 134 ft | $23 |
| WILL | 018 | standard nonelectric | 56 ft | 183 ft | 148 ft | $23 |
| WILL | 024 | standard nonelectric | 65 ft | 129 ft | 125 ft | $23 |
| WILL | 025 | standard nonelectric | 56 ft | 86 ft | 202 ft | $23 |
| WILL | 026 | standard nonelectric | 130 ft | 80 ft | 148 ft | $23 |
| WILL | 027 | standard nonelectric | 55 ft | 86 ft | 216 ft | $23 |
| WILL | 038 | rv nonelectric | 145 ft | 292 ft | 189 ft | $23–$33 |
The agency files 33 more records here that aren’t sites for the night. It types every one of them MANAGEMENT rather than a campsite. They’re in the table above, marked for what they are, and none of them is 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 52 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions
Where it is
Spencer Bench CabinChugach National Forest · 6.9 mi
Spencer Glacier Whistle Stop Group CampgroundChugach National Forest · 8.3 miBertha Creek CampgroundChugach National Forest · 13 mi
Granite CreekChugach National Forest · 15 mi
Pigot Bay CabinChugach National Forest · 17 miFrom Anchorage go 55 miles south on Seward highway to Portage Glacier Road (milepost 78.9). The campground is located at mile 4.1 of the Portage Glacier Road.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Anchorage, AK
Typical weather
Typical October night 31°F, day 43°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
Williwaw Campground 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 →