White Pine Backcountry Campground Permits
October 2026
About
Overview
White Pine Backcountry Campground is a primitive camp located in the southern district of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, on the lower peninsula of Michigan. It is located approximately two miles from the Trail's End Road trailhead on the Platte Plains hiking trail south of Empire just off of M-22.
This year-round campground has six campsites, two shared fire rings, pit toilet, and two shared animal resistant food storage lockers. Plan to pack your water into the campsite, as there is no well in the campground.
Summer temperatures range from upper 70s to 90 degrees F (25° to 32° C) during the day, and from the 50s to 70 degrees F (10° to 25° C) at night.
Winters are cold, with daytime highs from 20° to 30° F (-7° to -1° C) and lows in the 10s and 20s F (-12° to -7° C). Snow is usually on the ground from late November through March.
Recreation
The Platte Plains trail system boasts more than 25 miles (40 km) of trails, some of which can be accessed a short walk away from the campground.
Facilities
This year-round campground has six campsites, two shared fire rings, pit toilet, and two shared animal resistant food storage lockers.
Plan to pack your water into the campsite, as there is no well in the campground.
Pack it in, pack it out. Whatever you bring in, you are responsible for bringing out. Trash receptacles are not provided.
Natural Features
The campground is within wilderness. Designated Wilderness areas are the most protected public lands in America. They are managed with restraint to preserve characteristics of wilderness and solitude. The Sleeping Bear Dunes Wilderness, within the boundaries of the Lakeshore, is over 30,000 acres.
The beaches of Lake Michigan are about 1/2 mile (0.80 km) walk from camp. Although the lakeshore is long and narrow, it has northern hardwood and conifer forests, abandoned farm meadows, wetlands, lakes, streams, bogs, and splended examples of glacially formed landscape.
The most prominent features in the park, and those for which it is named, are perched sand dunes above Lake Michigan. The overlooks at Sleeping Bear, Empire and Pyramid Point bluffs are about 400 feet (122 m) above the lake. Within 65 miles (105 km) of Lake Michigan shoreline and numberous inland lakes and streams, the park is wonderfully water-oriented.
Amenities
Phone: 231-326-4700
Is White Pine Backcountry Campground Permits fully booked?
A campground showing no availability is almost never full for good. People cancel — plans change, weather turns, someone books three weekends and keeps one — and the site goes straight back into the booking system, usually without warning and often at odd hours. The reason sold-out campgrounds feel impossible is not that sites never free up; it is that nobody is watching at the moment they do.
CampHawk watches White Pine Backcountry Campground Permits in Empire, MI for you. We recheck it every 15 seconds, around the clock, and the moment a site opens we send a text, an email and a push notification — and on Recreation.gov we can put the site straight into your cart, so it is held while you get to your phone.
Searching is free and needs no account — the calendar above is live right now. Watching White Pine Backcountry Campground Permits for cancellations is the paid part.