Camping on Kootenay Lake

BC Parks operates 9 properties around Kootenay Lake, from the 2 with their own full page on this site to smaller day-use and boat-access sites. The table below reads straight from this site’s BC Parks feed, refreshed every ten minutes, so the site counts and campfire-ban column are never more than a few minutes old once the feed is current.

This site has a full page for 2 of the 9 — Kokanee Creek Park and Kootenay Lake Park — with their own camping, fees and season detail; the other 7 in the table link straight to their own page at bcparks.ca instead.

Several of these parks also have their own trail pages on this site: Kokanee Creek Park trails, Gibson Lake to Kokanee Lake, Pulpit Rock and Cody Caves access trail.

Reading 5 min ago. “Not listed” means BC Parks’ own feed carries no figure for that park, most often because it is a day-use or boat-access site rather than a vehicle-accessible campground. Source: BC Parks.

Across the 3 parks that report a site count, BC Parks’ feed lists 253 frontcountry sites around the lake right now. BC Parks’ feed also marks 0 of the 9 parks here as requiring a day-use pass. Source: BC Parks.

All 9 parks carry at least one posted BC Parks advisory right now; see each park's own page, linked above, for what it says. BC Parks' own facility lists mark 3 parks — Kokanee Creek Park, Kootenay Lake Park, Kokanee Glacier Park — with a boat launch. Source: BC Parks.

Between the 9, BC Parks’ feed lists Backcountry camping, Cabins and huts, Frontcountry camping, Group camping, Marine-accessible camping, RV-accessible camping, Wilderness camping and Winter camping as camping types somewhere around the lake, though not every type is available at every park — see each park’s own row above and its own page for which types apply there. Source: BC Parks.

8 private campgrounds, RV parks and marinas around the lake have their own working website, checked directly rather than pulled from a feed. They are grouped below by shore, in the same order this site groups communities: West Arm, North Shore, East Shore, then the south end.

Coordinates for these operators come from the BC Geographic Names Web Service or, where no such record exists for an operator’s street address, from Nominatim geocoding the operator’s own address or business name. Each entry below is grouped under the nearest community in this site’s own data by straight-line distance, which is why an operator with a Kaslo mailing address can still appear under a different, closer community here.

3 of the 8 — Nelson RV Park & Marina, Schroeder Creek Resort, Woodbury Resort & Marina — note a boat launch on their own site. 1 on the West Arm, 3 on the North Shore, 2 on the East Shore, 2 on the South end — this site's own count, not a figure BC Parks or any operator publishes.

This site does not yet list Recreation Sites and Trails BC’s free or low-cost forest recreation sites around Kootenay Lake — none of this site’s data files carry a sourced entry for one, so nothing is published here rather than guessing at a location or a site count.

The 9 BC Parks properties and 8 private operators above are what this page can currently confirm; a forest recreation site, run by the province rather than BC Parks or a private operator, is a different kind of listing this site has not sourced yet.

The province keeps its own list at sitesandtrailsbc.ca, including recreation sites, trails and Crown land camping rules for the region — the place to check before camping somewhere this page does not cover.

5 of the 9 BC Parks properties around the lake take an online reservation right now, each through its own link in the BC Parks reservation system. That list is read live from the same feed as the table above, so a park that starts or stops taking reservations shows up here within this page’s usual ten-minute refresh:

• Kokanee Creek Park
• Kootenay Lake Park
• Lockhart Beach Park
• Pilot Bay Park
• Kokanee Glacier Park

Source: BC Parks.

The private campgrounds and RV parks above take bookings directly — by phone or through the operator’s own website, both listed in the directory above, not through the BC Parks reservation system.

BC Parks runs one central reservation system, camping.bcparks.ca, for every property it operates province-wide, not a separate booking site per park; the links above go straight to each park’s own listing inside that system. A park marked “No online reservation” in the table above is not necessarily closed to camping — this page’s feed does not state whether it runs first-come, first-served, so check that park’s own page, linked in the table above, before a visit.

Every BC Parks property from the table above sits on the parks layer below; every operator or park with a boat launch, private or public, sits on the launches layer. Toggle either on or off to see just the pins that matter for a given trip.