Colorado campsites, permits & trip conditions

Get the sold-out spot. Know if it’s still worth the drive.

Colorado’s best campgrounds, permits, and wilderness zones open up all the time — we catch the cancellation and email you the moment we spot it. And for Rocky Mountain National Park trips, we keep watching the wildfires, smoke, and closures around your dates, so you know in time to adjust or hand off the spot. No other tracker does the second half.

Watch your first Colorado spot — free. Just your email:

One tap, no password — new or returning, it’s the same box. We only write when a spot opens, or when fire, smoke, or a closure moves in on an RMNP trip.

2-minute setup: pick your spots → your dates → done. We take it from there.

What planning camping is actually like

From getting out of the group chat, to actually getting there — away from civilization.

Comic panel: a family on the couch, every campsite for their dream trip sold out
Comic panel: the Campsite Ranger alert lands and the family celebrates a booked site
Comic panel: wildfire smoke drifts toward the campground, but the Ranger has already flagged clear alternatives
Comic panel: the family around a campfire at the new, smoke-free site

Every beat of this strip is a real feature — the alert, the smoke heads-up, the “still clear nearby” save. Put the Ranger on your trip.

Berkeley the dog wading through a wildflower meadow above an alpine lakeThe Mount Bierstadt trailhead sign in a green alpine valleyAn orange tent in evening light in a Colorado mountain valley

Getting out there isn’t a luxury — it’s maintenance, as non-negotiable as the annual physical. These are our own trips (and that’s Berkeley in the wildflowers); the Ranger runs for my family first.

Live — updating automatically

We don’t just find the spot. We tell you if it’s still worth going.

Fire season turns every trip into a dozen open tabs — fire map, smoke map, closure page, forecast. We watch all of it around Rocky Mountain National Park trips today (more parks on the way) and message you in time to change plans. Below, the same live data for Colorado’s most-wanted spots.

See all six spots on the full live board →
How it works

Set the campsite watch once. We do the watching.

Set it up in two minutes, then forget about it. We don’t stop watching until you tell us to.

01

Set your campsite watches, once

Pick your campgrounds, permits, and wilderness zones, plus the dates you’d actually take. Two minutes, then you’re done.

02

We watch it all, around the clock

Every couple of minutes we check for cancellations — plus fire, smoke, and closures around RMNP trips. You never think about it again.

03

You get an email (or text)

The moment a spot opens — or your RMNP trip’s conditions change — a plain email, or a text the moment those go live, with a direct link. Nothing else to do.

What we watch

The three hardest kinds of Colorado reservation.

If it’s on recreation.gov and it sells out in seconds, the Ranger keeps an eye on it for you.

Campgrounds
27 Colorado campgrounds, from Rocky Mountain NP to the Maroon Bells.
Moraine Park · Glacier Basin · Silver Bell
Timed-entry permits
The reservation windows that gate access to the busiest places.
RMNP Bear Lake · Brainard Lake · Mount Blue Sky
Wilderness permits
Overnight backcountry permits that book out the day they release.
Conundrum Hot Springs · Four Pass Loop · Capitol Lake
Coming soon

Colorado State Parks are next.

Cherry Creek, Chatfield, Golden Gate Canyon and the rest book through a separate system. Get on the list and you’ll be first in the day park-watching goes live.

Why Campsite Ranger

The whole trip — not just the booking.

Every other tracker stops the moment a campsite opens. We watch the Colorado permits and wilderness zones they skip — then keep watching the fire, smoke, and closures around your dates, so you don’t just land the spot, you actually get there.

See the full feature-by-feature comparison →

Founding access

Stop refreshing recreation.gov.
Start getting an email the second a spot opens.

Tell us the Colorado spots you want — we watch all season, and you just get the email or text and book before anyone else. And if a trip falls through, give the spot back — someone downstream is watching for it.

Notify me when a spot opens

Founding Explorers — lock $25/yr forever, or $10 a trip