Yaak River Campground (MT)
3Heads up3 fires, nearest 32 mi
- Right now
- Closedrecreation.gov lists every site closed this weekend, read 16:37 UTC
- A night
- $16When it reopens, per site
- Sites
- 45In the agency’s record
- Season
- May 1Opens May 1. No closing date published.
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 6 notices
In the agency’s own words
Yaak River Campground is located approximately 8 miles west of Troy, Montana and 6.5 miles east of the Idaho border on Highway 2 . This campground is located at the confluence of the Kootenai and Yaak Rivers. There are campsites on both sides of the Yaak River. Keep reading
Recreation
The Yaak and Kootenai Rivers provide ample opportunity for visitors to enjoy fishing, rafting and canoeing, among other activities. Boats can be launched at a primitive boat ramp near the campground. Anglers can expect a catch of mostly whitefish and a variety of trout. Hiking and mountain biking opportunities are available on a variety of trails within the Cabinet Mountains. Kootenai Falls, the largest un-dammed waterfall in the state and an attraction of historical significance for the Kootenai Tribe, is located about 15 miles east of Yaak River Campground. It offers spectacular views, as the river drops 300 feet in just a few hundred yards. A swinging bridge is available and provides a different point of view to see the falls.
Facilities
The campground has 45 sites, including one host site, all with tables and fire rings. Most sites offer an average length of 32 feet. Vault toilets, garbage service, firewood and drinking water are available during the peak season. The campground campsites are not currently on the reservation system. The reservable group site is available for large groups up to 75 people. It is equipped with multiple tables, grills and a large campfire circle. A boat ramp located in Loop B gives access to the Kootenai River.
Natural Features
The group day use area is located on the east side (Loop A) of Yaak River Campground. Both facilities are in a heavily wooded part of the forest, with the Yaak and Kootenai Rivers running nearby. Tall grasses, shrubs and young pines cover the ground and mature evergreens offer shade overhead. The facility is situated at an elevation of about 1,900 feet, close to the Montana-Idaho border in northwestern Montana. A variety of wildlife makes its home in the area.
Nearby Attractions
Yaak River Campground is located along the David Thompson Historic Route, which is listed as one of the Top 10 Scenic Drives in the Northern Rocky Mountains. Ross Creek Giant Cedars, a 100-acre grove of majestic cedar trees, is about 23 miles south of the campground.
What the agency tells you
Yaak River Day Use Group Site is located in Loop A. Check-in 10:00 am / Check -out 10:00 pm. Check in with campground host upon arrival. Host is located in Loop A
16 Day Stay Limit in overnight campsites
If your extra vehicle is at the site longer than 30 minutes, you will need to pay the $5 extra vehicle fee or move the vehicle to the Overflow Parking Area.
Everything else this campground posts · 3
All sites are first come-first serve. Saving sites is prohibited
Click here for more information on the Kootenai National Forest
Don't Move Firewood: Prevent the spread of tree-killing pests by obtaining firewood near your destination and burning it on-site. For more information visit dontmovefirewood.org.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 45
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 30 ft
- Paved pads
- All
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- VAULT TOILETS on 1 of 46 campsite records
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…toilets, garbage service, firewood and drinking water are available during the peak season. The…”
- Boat ramp
- Yes
- Firewood
- Mentioned
- Camp host
- On site
- recreation.gov lists “Host”
- Stay limit
- 48 nights
- recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Around the campground
- On the water
- Waterfall, River, Creek
- Biking
- Boating
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Historic site
- Swimming
- Wildlife viewing
- Night sky · 352nd darkest of 501 in MT
- Bortle 2
Nothing to book until it reopensread 16:37 UTC
recreation.gov lists every site closed this weekend
Every one of the next thirty nights is in recreation.gov’s record and not one site is being offered on any of them. That’s a campground closed or not yet released for booking, not a sold-out one.
Tell me when it reopens
Watch for it to come back
One email when the agency reopens it, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.
We check the agency’s own record once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time it stops saying closed.
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.
Every line of the receipt · 13
What you actually pay
“If your extra vehicle is at the site longer than 30 minutes, you will need to pay the $5 extra vehicle fee or move the vehicle to the Overflow Parking Area.” · the U.S. Forest Service’s own agency notice
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
Why this page can’t say why
recreation.gov lists every site at Yaak River Campground (MT) closed this Friday and Saturday night. The U.S. Forest Service has published no closure notice we hold, so this page can’t say why, and it won’t fill the gap with a guess. A closed night isn’t a sold-out one: the reservations its record still carries were taken before the sites were closed.
There’s no notice to quote and no reason to argue with, so this page offers you the watch and the list below, and no letter.
Open within 60 miles · 3
The agency’s own word that these are open, not our reading of a season.
- Meadow Creek CampgroundKaniksu National Forest · 20 mi
- Robinson Lake CampgroundIdaho Panhandle National Forests · 31 mi
- Copper Creek CampgroundKaniksu National Forest · 31 mi
recreation.gov availability, read 16:37 UTC · rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
46 records · the site map
All 46 records
Toilet distances are OpenStreetMap’s, measured for 1 of the 46 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. 45 of the 46 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| Loop A | 1 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 10 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 11 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 12 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 13 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 14 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 15 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 16 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 17 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 18 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 19 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 2 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 20 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 21 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 22 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 23 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 24 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 25 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 26 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 27 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 28 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 29 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 3 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 4 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 5 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 6 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 7 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 8 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop A | 9 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop B | 30 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop B | 30A | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop B | 30B | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop B | 31 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop B | 32 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop B | 33 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop B | 34 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop B | 35 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop B | 36 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop B | 37 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop B | 38 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop B | 39 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop B | 40 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop B | 41 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop B | 42 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| Loop B | 43 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $16 | ||
| YAAK RIVER DAY USE AREA | 0001 | day use | 681 ftYaak River | 305 ft | $60 |
The agency files 1 more record here that isn’t a site for the night. It files it as day use. It’s in the table above, marked for what it is, and it isn’t counted as a site.
25 of 46 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Yaak Mtn. Lookout RentalKootenai National Forest · 2.4 mi
Kilbrennan Lake CampgroundKootenai National Forest · 4.7 miYaak Falls CampgroundKootenai National Forest · 7.1 mi
Loon Lake CampgroundKootenai National Forest · 14 miRed Top CampgroundKootenai National Forest · 14 mi
Lunch Peak LookoutKaniksu National Forest · 16 miFrom Troy, travel west on Highway 2 for approximately 7 miles. The fee station and campground hosts are located on the east side of the road, prior to crossing the Yaak River.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Troy, MT
Typical weather
Typical May night 40°F, day 70°F.
Coldest night of the open season: typical May night 40°F. Bring the bag rated for it.
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 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
Roadless country, and what’s coming for it
You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.
Who answers for this land
Yaak River Campground (MT) is in Montana’s 1st congressional district. Its representative, Ryan Zinke (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →