What this is
Campsite Ranger is operated by Campsite Ranger LLC, a Colorado limited liability company (Colorado SOS ID 20261934533).
Campsite Ranger watches Colorado campgrounds, permits, and wilderness zones on Recreation.gov and emails (and eventually texts) you when something you’re watching opens up.
- For Rocky Mountain National Park trips it also passes along official conditions signals — closures, nearby wildfires, smoke.
- Setting a watch is free and stays free.
- While Campsite Ranger is in beta, trip-safety alerts and release reminders for every system are free for everyone; beta ends when text alerts go live, and before any of it moves behind a paid plan we will email free accounts 14 days ahead.
- Founding Rangers keep everything that ever moves behind the gate, permanently.
- Paid plans add unlimited watches and text alerts once texts are live: $25 per year for the first 100 Founding Rangers, $49 per year after that.
- The One Trip Pass is $7 per trip while the Founding 100 last and $12 after, and covers one set of dates.
- Every plan is a one-time payment covering one year — nothing auto-renews, and we email a heads-up about a month before a year ends.
- We send alert emails, service notes, and an occasional membership email (pricing, renewals, Founding spots running out). Membership emails have their own one-click opt-out, and opting out never affects your alerts.
What it is not
- Not a booking service. We never reserve, hold, buy, or resell anything. When you get an alert, you book it yourself, in your own Recreation.gov account, at the normal price. We can’t guarantee an opening will still be there.
Not a safety service. Conditions info (fire, smoke, air quality, closures, weather) is a convenience heads-up drawn from public feeds. It can lag or be incomplete.
Always check official sources — NPS, InciWeb, AirNow, NWS, CDOT — before you travel. Your safety decisions are yours.
- Not a government service. We’re independent and unaffiliated with Recreation.gov, NPS, or any agency. Data source: Recreation.gov and public government feeds.
What we ask of you
- Use it for your own trips (and your family’s) — don’t resell alerts or scrape the service.
- Only add a phone number that’s yours, and only check the text-consent box if you mean it.
- Can’t use a reservation you booked? Cancel it on Recreation.gov so someone else can — that’s the spirit of the whole thing.
Text message (SMS) alerts
Program: Campsite Ranger campsite & permit alerts.
If you opt in, we send you a text when a campsite, permit, or wilderness zone you asked us to watch becomes available, and when wildfire, smoke, or closure conditions affect your trip dates.
These are transactional alerts — we never send marketing texts.
How you opt in: add your own mobile number in the sign-in box, the trip planner, or account settings, and check the text-alert consent box beside it. The box is unchecked by default.
A mobile number is optional, and so is consent: neither is required to sign up, buy a plan, or use Campsite Ranger, and a number saved without consent is never texted. We store the date and wording of your consent. Text alerts start once the program launches; full details are on the text alerts page.
- Message frequency varies — it depends on how many campsites and permits you watch and how often they open. Most people get a handful of messages a month; some months, none.
- Message and data rates may apply.
- To stop: reply STOP to any message and we’ll stop texting you immediately. You can also switch back to email in your settings. Reply START to resume.
- For help: reply HELP to any message, or email chris@campsiteranger.com. It’s a real person.
- Carriers aren’t liable for delayed or undelivered messages, and delivery isn’t guaranteed on every network.
- Your mobile opt-in data and consent are never shared with third parties — see the privacy policy.
The honest liability part
This is a Colorado service built by one person, free to start and paid only if you choose to. It’s provided as-is, with no warranties — alerts can be late, missed, or wrong; the service can go down; features can change or end.
To the maximum extent Colorado law allows, Campsite Ranger isn’t liable for missed reservations, trip costs, or decisions made on conditions info.
Paying does not change that: what a payment buys is more watches and more signals, never a guarantee that a reservation will open or that we will catch it.
If these terms change materially, we will say so before the change applies to you.
Privacy
Covered separately and briefly: the privacy policy.
Questions or problems? Email chris@campsiteranger.com. These terms are governed by Colorado law, and any dispute is subject to the courts of the State of Colorado.