Find the Shasta Lake campground that actually fits your rig.

Local insider tip: Three loops, three different seasons, and Recreation.gov hides which loop a site is in — the loop number only appears buried in each site's description text. Loop 1 is the shoulder-season loop, the only one open in March, April and October. Loops 2 and 3 run May 10 to September 12 only. Loop 2 is the best all-round loop. Six of its fourteen sites are explicitly described as shady, it holds the only two sites described as being near the trail to the lake view — 015 and 018 — and it contains site 046, the longest in the campground at 55 feet. Loop 3 is the big-rig loop, with four sites at 50 feet plus 029 and 035 at 45. Site 037 in Loop 3 gets singled out as very spacious and isolated. Loop 1 is where the freeway complaints cluster. The three angriest reviews about I-5 name sites 4, 5 and 9, and all three are Loop 1. Site 059 is literally described as "near exit". If you are booking Loop 1 for the shoulder season, take the noise seriously. The sixteen doubles are 006, 007, 009, 013, 017, 019, 022, 030, 031, 033, 041, 042, 045, 049, 051 and 057 — that is 16 doubles plus 42 reservable singles plus the host site at 002, which reconciles exactly to the official 59. Site 009 is a double rated for only 22 feet, which is a large group in a small hole. Site 022 is the best big-rig double at 40 feet. Watch the short ones: 009 at 22 feet, then 024, 044 and 058 at 25, and 007 at 26. Sites 034 through 042 along Antlers Road are reported as too uneven for larger rigs, and site 021 has trees close enough to interfere with slides and awnings. The camp hosts get unusually consistent praise here — by name, repeatedly, across years. The host sits at site 002 and sells firewood. Two hazards the Forest Service posts officially: bears frequent the area and every site has a locker, and poison oak grows in the campground. Poison oak is the second most repeated complaint after noise. Add June bugs, mosquitoes, dust, and real heat — this sits at about 1,100 feet, so 90°F in June and worse in July.

Local insider tip: Arbuckle Flat is the far one. The Forest Service's own boat tour guide puts it plainly: after passing Jones Valley Inlet there are no services, and camping is limited to one primitive boat-access-only campground. That one is this one. Everything past here is empty water. Then there is the thing that makes this stretch genuinely strange, and it is well documented. The upper Pit was never cleared of timber before Shasta Dam filled — the Forest Service explains that the Second World War broke out about the time the clearing crews reached the confluence of the Pit and Squaw arms, and most of those men left for the war. So the standing dead trees are still there. The Forest Service says they lend an eerie appearance to the shoreline and are a hazard to boaters, and that because of them water-skiing has been prohibited above Arbuckle Flat. This campground is the boundary marker for that rule. Those snags are also why anglers come. Silverthorn calls the Pit Arm the best bass water on the lake and describes fishing in and among the standing trees; other guides single out the standing timber in the Pit and Squaw arms for spotted bass. Be honest with yourself though: no angler names Arbuckle Flat itself as a spot. This is the water the campground sits in, not a documented fishing location. On the sites, we have exactly one description and it comes from a marina operator rather than the Forest Service: set back in a deep cove on the south side, and carry your gear up the hill. A paddling retailer's blog instead calls it a forested peninsula — the two descriptions of the landform contradict each other and we cannot resolve it. What both agree on, implicitly, is that you are not stepping off the boat into your campsite. The Forest Service's own line is the honest summary of access: whether or not it is difficult varies depending on the current lake level. Check the live level at the top of this page before you commit. One quirk worth knowing. Of the four boat-in pages, only Arbuckle Flat's carries a campfire permit line — and it says permits are required at a dispersed site, which reads as misapplied boilerplate, since this is a developed site named in the fire order. Get the free California permit anyway; it takes minutes. Finally: there are no reviews of this campground anywhere. Not The Dyrt, not Campendium, not freecampsites, not a forum, not a video. Eleven sites and not one published account.

Local insider tip: Seven sites, one loop, and they are not equal. Sites 1 and 7 are the two rated for 45 feet; everything else is 35. Site 7 is the best on the loop and it is not close — double-wide, nearly level, two picnic tables, no neighbours on either side, and close to the restrooms. Site 1 is the quiet one, furthest from the freeway. Site 4 is the private one and picks up shade from about 3pm in July. Site 3 is large and shaded by about 4:30pm, and one family has been booking sites 2 and 3 together for over twenty years. Site 5 has a tent pad too small for a real tent — campers have arrived and left. Sites 3 and 4 draw repeat complaints about noise and unclear boundaries. Now the thing every other guide leaves out: you will hear Interstate 5. The campground sits about six tenths of a mile from the freeway with no ridge in between, and jake brakes carry at night. It is the single most common complaint across every review platform, and it is not universal — plenty of people sleep fine — but if quiet is why you camp, book site 1 or go elsewhere. Bring water regardless of what any page says. The Forest Service lists potable water as available; its own day use page for the same complex says it is not; and the concessionaire's site says flush toilets and water spigots in one sentence and "currently has no potable water" in the next. Campers reported an outage through 2022 and 2023 and working flush toilets again in 2026. Call the ranger station at 530-275-1587 before you rely on it. Heat is the real enemy here — 109°F has been logged in August, dropping into the 70s after sundown. Mosquitoes are bad at dusk, poison oak is abundant right up to the sites, and foxtails come in with the dry grass. Bear boxes at every site are not decorative.

Local insider tip: Beehive Point is a beach you camp on, not a campground. There are no numbered sites, no tables and no fire rings — you drive down onto the shoreline, find a flat piece of it, and pay at an iron ranger. In the service season that costs $17 a night and, in Recreation.gov's own words, "this area is vehicle specific and charges for each vehicle" — so it is per vehicle, not per site, which is the single most commonly missed thing about this place. Day use is $12. Outside the season, roughly mid-September to mid-May, it is free with no services at all. Two official sources describe it and they do not agree on what it is called. The Forest Service calls it Beehive Point Shoreline Area. Recreation.gov calls it Beehive Dispersed Area. Aggregators have invented a third, "Beehive Point Shoreline Campground", which no official source uses. Same place, three names. The thing that actually decides whether you enjoy this place is the lake level, and it cuts both ways. Too low and there is no reaching the water: one camper in July 2025 wrote that a few years earlier "the water was so low that we literally could not reach it, even after a long walk down, it just became too rocky". Too high and there is no beach to camp on: another, in May 2022, noted it "would be difficult access if Shasta was full". Beehive is at its best in the middle. Check the live level at the top of this page before you commit to the drive — it is the one number that matters here. Now the rule that will catch people out, and no aggregator carries it. Beehive Point is **not** listed in Exhibit A of Forest Order 14-26-07, the current fire restrictions order running 1 July to 31 December 2026 — none of Shasta Lake's shoreline areas are. Under that order, building or attending a fire outside a listed developed site is prohibited. But the order carries an exemption that fits this place precisely: a holder of a valid California campfire permit may build a fire "within 10 feet of Shasta Lake, Trinity Lake, Iron Canyon Reservoir and at least 50 feet from any vegetation". So a wood fire here is legal only if you have the permit and you build it down on the bare shoreline at the waterline. Camp back in the trees, where the shade is, and you cannot have one. The Forest Service's own page for this site says simply "Campfire permit required" — accurate, but not the whole story. A camper in July 2024 put the practical version well: "We went during a no burn period, so we were out of luck and ran out of camp." Two more corrections to what you will read elsewhere. There are toilets — portable ones, in season, along with trash service; they are removed in the off-season, which is why some reviews say there are none and others say there are. And there is a published food-storage requirement: Recreation.gov's page for this facility states that all food must be kept in approved containers. What you get in exchange for the roughness is a genuinely beautiful, cheap, waterfront pitch that big rigs can reach. A first-hand account from 2018: "The beach is massive (even though the water level was high!) and you can park any size rig on it. It's not very flat though." A 2025 camper made it in a 26-foot Class C. Several report needing high clearance to get to the better spots. The honest downside, from the campers themselves: crowds and noise on weekends and school holidays, with ATVs, generators and loose dogs; broken glass at the entrance, bad enough that one reviewer's dog was cut; wasps around fire pits in midsummer; and poison oak, which the official page confirms is abundant throughout the forest. One camper's summary of the wooded area: "Most everything up in the trees is poison oak."

Local insider tip: Read the self-contained rule before you book, because it is stricter than it sounds. The Superintendent's Compendium says camping here is limited to motorhomes and trailers equipped with fully self-contained toilet and wastewater devices, and that no tents are permitted. Recreation.gov puts it even more bluntly: sleeping is allowed only in self-contained vehicles. There are no restrooms in the campground at all — not vault, not flush. Your rig's own toilet is the only one. A van or truck camper without a built-in toilet and grey and black tanks does not qualify as written. Pop-up tent trailers are explicitly allowed if they do have them. What you get for that constraint is the cheapest developed site in this directory at $20, a genuinely quiet campground, and the best cell signal we have found anywhere on the lake — T-Mobile and AT&T both testing 5G excellent as recently as this summer. The rig-length picture needs care. Recreation.gov says 35 feet on every site record, with no per-site variation. Campers say otherwise. One found the layout too narrow even for a 22-foot trailer. Another with a 36-foot fifth wheel reported very few sites that would take it and moved to Oak Bottom instead. Only one reviewer has commented on levelness, calling the spaces wide and almost level, which is too thin to generalise from. Treat 35 feet as the paper ceiling. There is a site-count oddity worth knowing. Recreation.gov's availability grid shows 15 bookable sites numbered 1 to 15, but the same system holds live individual records for sites up to 32, and one independent guide describes 32 RV spaces on asphalt. We could not establish whether the higher-numbered spaces are closed, retired or simply out of the reservation inventory. If you want more choice than 15 sites, call the park on 530-246-1225 and ask. Two practical notes. If you run solar, the oak and pine cover that reviewers praise for shade is the same cover two others blamed for not charging their panels — pick your site accordingly. And campers report aggressive ants; one described colonies that would have been into the camper in minutes. Food storage is a legal requirement. With no lockers here, your rig is the compliant storage: everything out of sight, inside, unless it is in immediate use.

Local insider tip: This is BLM land, not Forest Service, and that single fact changes every rule on this page. Forest Order 14-26-07, which governs campfires everywhere else around Shasta Lake, does not apply here. Two BLM orders do, and the operative one is blunt. **Campfires are banned across this area except in three named campgrounds.** BLM Fire Prevention Order CA-360-26-01, effective 28 June 2026 and running until further notice, prohibits "setting, building, maintaining, attending, or using any open fire, campfire, charcoal barbecue, or stove... except campfires within approved fire pits and grills already provided in the following campgrounds: Shasta Campground, Ohl Olsen Campground and Bohemotash Primitive Campground in the Chappie-Shasta OHV Area". If you pull off somewhere in the 52,000 acres and light anything, you are in violation. The one exemption is a portable gas, jellied-petroleum or pressurised-liquid-fuel stove, and even that needs a valid California campfire permit, which is free. The penalty language in the order runs to a $100,000 fine and up to twelve months. Which brings us to the thing this page previously got wrong, along with most of the internet. We had this listed as a free, facility-free dispersed camping area. It is not. **BLM publishes no camping policy for the Chappie-Shasta OHV Area at all** — the main BLM page for the area does not mention camping in any form, and the BLM brochure's only camping text describes the developed campground. Dispersed camping is permitted by default on California BLM land, at 14 days in any 28 with a 25-mile move afterwards, and nothing we found prohibits it here. But BLM does not affirmatively say it is allowed, publishes no map of where, and the fire order separately bans running an engine off designated roads and trails — so you cannot legally drive off-route to reach a spot anyway. What BLM does publish is three campgrounds, all named in its own fire order: **Shasta Campground** — 27 tent and trailer sites near the staging area, along Keswick Reservoir below the dam. Fire rings and a picnic table at each site, vault toilets, potable water, trash collection, camp host, quiet hours 10pm to 6am, dogs on leash. $20 a night. Note BLM's own site count disagrees with the volunteer group that supports the area, which says 22. **Ohl Olsen Group Campground** — two group sites, "large gravel lots, great for RVs, trailers", each with vault toilet, potable water, picnic tables, trash can and a campfire ring. No hookups. $60 a night. A mile and a half past the dam, with the camp host based at Shasta Campground. **Bohemotash Primitive Campground** — named in the fire order and labelled on BLM's 2026 route map, and that is the entire published record. No BLM web page, no site count, no fee, no coordinates. It is the closest thing to primitive camping BLM acknowledges here, and we can tell you nothing else about it. Two more things that will shape a trip. The dam crossing is a gate on your day: to reach Shasta and Ohl Olsen you drive across Shasta Dam, and the Bureau of Reclamation closes the crest from 10pm to 6am. Miss it and you are locked out until morning — Copley Mountain is the southern staging area that avoids the dam. You will also need a valid driver's licence and current vehicle registration, and vehicles are subject to security inspection. There is no permit requirement and no advance notice needed, despite an obsolete claim about a 72-hour permit that still circulates on OHV sites. And red sticker vehicles are barred from 1 July to 30 September. BLM's brochure says so, and California's OHMVR riding-season table lists Chappie-Shasta's season as 1 October to 30 June for those machines. If your bike is a 2003–2021 model that does not meet emission standards, check your sticker before you load it.

Local insider tip: Chirpchatter is the campground that is still open. Its twin, Madrone, four miles up the road, has been shut by Forest Order 14-24-25 since November 2024 and stays shut until at least the end of 2026. Chirpchatter carries no closure order, the Forest Service lists it as open year round, and it is named in Exhibit A of the 2026 fire restrictions order — which means campfires remain permitted here while they are banned across most of the forest. If you wanted Madrone, this is the answer. The Forest Service gives the two camps word-for-word the same description: "Located east of Shasta Lake, these remote campsites offer the perfect spot to relax. Forested and shady, this is a perfect home base for your OHV adventures!" It is the only official prose that exists about this place, and it tells you two useful things. This is an OHV camp, and it is not a lake camp — the same page states there is no lake access from this facility. The OHV claim is backed elsewhere. The forest's own off-highway vehicle guide names exactly three campgrounds as OHV-friendly bases: McCloud Bridge, Deadlun and Chirpchatter. The system they serve is the Bagley Area OHV Routes, described as a series of recommended loops appropriate for a variety of skill levels and OHV types. No official source publishes a staging area, route mileage, loop names or difficulty ratings for Bagley, and the Motor Vehicle Use Map is the document that legally controls where you can ride. Two restrictions worth knowing before you unload: the forest prohibits riding OHVs on county or state roads including the paved western end of Fenders Ferry Road and any part of Gilman Road unless signed otherwise, and the 2026 fire order separately prohibits operating an internal combustion engine off National Forest System roads and trails. The other documented use is hunting and fishing. A 1999 Forest Service watershed analysis for this drainage — the most substantive official document that mentions Chirpchatter at all — says the two dominant recreation activities are hunting and fishing, peaking in April for turkey season and the fishing opener, and again in the fall for deer. The campground page says the same thing more briefly: very popular in the fall during hunting season. On which deer zone that is, we will not guess. The boundary of CDFW's Zone C-3 runs along the Pit River, and we could not establish from any published source which side of it this campground sits on. Check CDFW's zone map before you buy a tag. Now the honest part, and it is unusually stark. We found zero first-hand accounts of Chirpchatter anywhere on the open web. Zero reviews on The Dyrt, zero on Hipcamp, zero on Campflare, nothing on Campendium, nothing on Reddit, no YouTube video, nothing on the hunting or OHV forums. Not one photograph. Every listing you will find is a reworded copy of the same Forest Service page. That matters because the numbers are soft too. The Forest Service publishes no site count and no elevation for Chirpchatter. The five sites shown on this page come from aggregators. The elevation is worse: one aggregator says 2,300 feet, which is suspiciously close to the summit of nearby Chirpchatter Mountain rather than the campground; the USGS elevation service returns about 1,259 feet at the published coordinates. We have left the elevation blank rather than pick one. The 24-foot trailer figure on this page is from the same aggregator, which frames it honestly enough — trailers up to 24 feet can be accommodated, though the road conditions make larger rigs impractical — but it is not a Forest Service number either. The nearest thing to an official capacity figure is that same 1999 analysis, which says both campgrounds are small and can accommodate approximately five to ten groups each — a range for the pair, not a site count for either. Read all of it as the road talking, not the sites. One last note from that document, because nobody else will tell you: in 1999 the Forest Service classified Chirpchatter as a dispersed recreation site rather than a developed campground, and described it as in a degraded condition due to past floods and encroachment of non-native vegetation. The 2026 fire order now lists it among developed recreation sites, so its status has changed on paper in the intervening years — but a camp that flooded once sits where it sat.

Local insider tip: Three things separate Dekkas Rock from the other group camps on this arm, and two of them are genuinely useful. It is open year-round. Moore Creek and Pine Point both run May 10 to September 12; the Forest Service lists Dekkas Rock as year round with reservations, and Recreation.gov agrees. If you want a group site on the McCloud Arm in October or March, this is the only one. It has water. The Forest Service states plainly that potable water is available here. Pine Point's page says the opposite about itself, and Ellery Creek's and McCloud Bridge's do too. On an arm where the water question is disputed at three of six campgrounds, Dekkas Rock's is not. The third difference is the one to plan around: the parking is unpaved. The Forest Service specifies four unpaved spurs plus an unpaved eight-space overflow lot, and Recreation.gov records the driveway surface as gravel and the entry as back-in. Moore Creek and Pine Point are both paved. With a 16-foot trailer ceiling and no pull-throughs, this is a tents-and-small-trailers campground. The gate code is not optional and it is not distinctive. Recreation.gov's wording is direct: the customer must call the office one week in advance to get the gate combination. Two guides add that arriving without it risks being locked out with no refund — that consequence is not stated on any official page, so treat it as their claim rather than policy. Call Shasta Recreation Company on 530-275-8113. Worth knowing that Moore Creek, Pine Point and both Hirz Bay group camps carry identical language; the gate is the norm here, not a quirk of this campground. What you actually get for your 60 people is a well-equipped cookout: eight large tables, two pedestal grills, a family barbecue and two fire rings, under ponderosa pine and oak. Recreation.gov records the shade as yes and one site visit describes the entire campground as shaded, which matters on an arm that reaches into the hundreds in July. There is no group shelter or amphitheatre here — the amphitheatre in this area is at Hirz Bay, and one review's mention of an industrial-size sink is not confirmed by any official page. One rule to pass to your group before you book: no amplified music. It is in the Recreation.gov terms. And the honest caveat. The Dyrt has zero reviews of this campground. Campendium has zero. We found one substantive descriptive account, a site visit from 2019. If you read a confident account of what it is like to camp here, ask where it came from.

Local insider tip: Nineteen sites is small enough that the per-site records matter more here than anywhere else on the arm, and Recreation.gov's own site notes do most of the work for you. Six sites are flagged "lake access": 010, 011, 012, 013, 014 and 016. Three of those — 010, 011 and 012 — also read "near water faucet and restroom," which makes them the practical picks. Site 012 is the only one whose note actually begins "Shady," and it is rated 40 ft. Sites 013, 014 and 016 begin "Sunny," which in a canyon that bakes through July and August is a warning, not a selling point. For length, the four sites above 30 feet are 010 (40 ft), 011 (35 ft), 012 (40 ft) and 019 (40 ft). Eight more are rated exactly 30 — no margin at all — and 001, 002, 017 and 018 top out at 20. If you are towing anything substantial, you are choosing from four sites, and they are the same four everyone else wants. Book on the six-month window. Two per-site cautions worth carrying with you. Recreation.gov flags site 008 as "difficult to back trailer into site." And a camper reported in June 2024 that site 011 will not take a trailer over 20 feet because of a retaining wall on the road — which directly contradicts Recreation.gov's 35 ft rating for that site. Nobody has resolved it. There is no camp host here, and it shows. Campers report two garbage cans for the whole campground and not emptied daily, overfilled trash lockers, and restrooms running out of paper. Bring your own supplies and pack your trash out. One reviewer in 2025 found the bear locker at site 019 unlockable because the key was broken. The most-repeated complaint by a wide margin is mosquitoes — May, June, July, it does not matter, and one camper said bug spray barely helped. Poison oak and blackberries grow inside the sites themselves, not just along the trails. Rattlesnakes have been reported twice in summer. Bears are around: a cub across the creek in July, large prints in August, and lockers at every site for a reason. On water: Recreation.gov lists water spigots and seven site records read "near water faucet," and campers have used them as recently as May 2026. But the Forest Service's own page says flatly that potable water is not available, and one camper in May 2021 found the pumps off. Treat a working tap as a bonus and arrive full.

Local insider tip: Gooseneck Cove is the easy one, and that is both the appeal and the catch. Of the four boat-in campgrounds on Shasta Lake, this is the shortest run from a ramp — roughly 2.4 straight-line miles from Sugarloaf by our own calculation, against five or six miles up the Pit Arm to Arbuckle Flat. It also sits on the arm the Forest Service itself calls the busiest and most developed on the lake, with four public ramps serving it across the full drawdown range. If you want a boat-in campsite without a serious expedition, this is the one. The trade is company. Read the four Forest Service descriptions side by side and a pattern appears. Greens Creek is "popular with those visitors who want to get away from the crowds." Arbuckle Flat is "very popular" with the same crowd-avoiding qualifier. Ski Island is "very popular during the summer months." Gooseneck Cove is simply "very popular" — no qualifier, no season, no suggestion of solitude. It is the only one of the four described that way, on the only arm the Forest Service singles out as busy. Now the number that will confuse you if you go looking. The Forest Service's Recreation Facilities Guide lists Gooseneck Cove at 1,050 feet — below Shasta's spillway crest of 1,067 feet, which would put the campsites underwater at full pool. Do not read it that way. That elevation column carries only six round values across all twenty-one Shasta Lake facilities, and one of them, Beehive Point, is assigned exactly the spillway elevation — it is a lake-referenced approximation, not a survey. Separately, the coordinate the Forest Service publishes for Gooseneck Cove falls inside the reservoir's mapped water surface in the USGS elevation model, meaning it marks the cove rather than the camp. No source anywhere describes this campground flooding, submerging or closing at high water, and the Forest Service lists it open year-round with vault toilets and tables installed. We have left the elevation field blank rather than publish a figure we cannot stand behind. What the cove actually looks like, nobody has written down. The only descriptive line in any Forest Service publication is that from Gooseneck Cove north you start seeing red volcanic-looking rocks, called basalt, lining the shoreline. Terrain modelling shows ground rising from the waterline to about 1,200 feet within 200 metres, so this is a steep-sided cove rather than a gentle beach shelf — whatever bench holds the twelve units is a small one. That is derived, not sourced. There are no reviews of this campground. None on The Dyrt, no Campendium listing, nothing on freecampsites, no forum thread, no video, no photograph. Twelve sites and not one published account.

Local insider tip: Greens Creek is the smallest boat-in on Shasta Lake — seven units against Ski Island's 29 — and the only one of the four on the McCloud Arm. Those two facts are most of the case for coming here. The third is the trail, and it is genuinely unusual: this is the only campground on the lake with a hiking trail leading out of camp that you can only reach by boat. The Greens Creek Trail runs 5.85 miles and climbs steeply, 1,230 feet to the ridge above, from a trailhead at 1,065 feet. The Forest Service describes it passing through fantastic limestone formations at the ridgetop that separate the McCloud and Squaw Creek arms, then descending back to lake level near the old mining community of Bully Hill, with commanding views along the way. Its own guidance: an excellent spring and autumn hike, and during summer months it can be very hot and dry. There is exactly one published camper review of this campground, on The Dyrt, rated four stars. In full: a simple little spot, there are tables there and shady spots for the tents, it is quiet, and if it has just rained there is the sound of waterfalls around. That is the entire first-hand record. No photographs of the campground exist anywhere on the open web that we could find — the Forest Service page carries a placeholder image. A caution about the sourcing, because two sites will tell you otherwise. One resort page claims nine sites rather than seven, and it also disagrees with the Forest Service on Ski Island and Gooseneck Cove, so we have gone with the Forest Service's seven. One AI-generated site claims running water and a camping fee here — both flatly contradicted by the Forest Service, which says no potable water and no fee. Two small things that separate Greens Creek from its siblings. It is the only one of the four whose Forest Service page lists non-motorized boating as a recreation opportunity, which with a 2.6-mile run from Hirz Bay makes it the most plausible paddle of the set — though no source documents anyone actually doing it, and the McCloud Arm carries heavy summer houseboat traffic. And bear boxes are claimed by two secondary sources but appear on no Forest Service page, so bring a canister or plan to hang. Whether Greens Creek itself runs in summer, nobody says. The reviewer's waterfalls came after rain.

Local insider tip: The first thing to get right about Gregory Beach is that it is not Gregory Creek Group Campground. They sit about a quarter of a mile apart on the same road and readers confuse them constantly. The group campground is a developed, reservable site with flush toilets, picnic tables, fire rings and a gate code, taking up to 100 people for $160 to $170 a night. Gregory Beach is a shoreline area with, in Recreation.gov's words, "no formal sites" — you find a spot on the beach and pay $17. One of them is on the fire order's list of sites where campfires are permitted. It is not this one. More on that below. The official description of this place is four words long. The Forest Service's page carries a mussel-protocol notice and then: "Shoreline Camping. Pack In, Pack Out." There is no restrictions field, no activities field, no elevation, no reservation information and no operator. It does not say whether there are toilets, tables or fire rings. That is the entire official record, and everything else on this page comes from Recreation.gov, from the forest's general pages, or from the eleven people who have written about staying here. So, the campfire rule, which is the most decision-relevant fact on this page and appears on no aggregator. Forest Order 14-26-07 runs from 1 July to 31 December 2026 and prohibits building, maintaining, attending or using a fire, campfire or stove fire outside the developed recreation sites listed in its Exhibit A. The word "shoreline" does not appear anywhere in that order. Gregory Creek Group Campground is on the list; Gregory Beach is not. What saves it is an exemption: a holder of a valid California campfire permit may build a fire "within 10 feet of Shasta Lake, Trinity Lake, Iron Canyon Reservoir and at least 50 feet from any vegetation". So a wood fire here is legal only with the permit and only down on the bare beach at the waterline — not up in the tree line where several campers report the better shaded spots are. A 2021 camper recorded the same thing in plainer language: "Permit required area for all fires and charcoal bbq's." Fees are disputed across three sources and we are not going to pick one. The Forest Service's current page says $17 a night and $12 for day use. The Recreation.gov feed still shows $15 and $10, which matches what campers actually paid in 2021. The Dyrt says $13 to $18. Budget $17 and carry cash or a check for the iron ranger. One camper woke to a $25 citation, which they were told was "$15 night + $10 fine" — the fee collection here is real, not nominal, and an official vehicle does come round. The season also disagrees with itself. The Forest Service says "Open Year Round with services from May 10 - Sept. 12". Recreation.gov's off-season is "typically Mid September to Mid May". The Dyrt says July through September, which matches nothing. What "services" means is chemical or portable toilets and trash collection — that is how the forest defines the shoreline-area product. Whether the fee stops with the services is genuinely unclear: the Forest Service page states the fee flatly with no seasonal qualifier, while its own Shasta Lake page says services and fees are discontinued in the off season. Both are official. We are showing you both. The lake level here surprises people in the wrong direction. The usual worry at Shasta is drawdown, and it applies — one November visitor found the water 150 feet below normal, another arrived at 40 percent capacity. But the most useful single observation anyone has published about this site is the opposite: in May 2024 a camper found the lake "basically full and there is zero shoreline". A beach campground needs beach, and at full pool there isn't any. Check the level at the top of this page before you drive. The honest warnings all come from campers rather than agencies, and they are consistent enough to pass on. The access road narrows to effectively one lane with a drop-off on one side and deep ruts; one party turned a 27-foot trailer around rather than risk it, while another took a 33-foot fifth wheel in without trouble and called it "certainly doable". Trash left by previous campers is mentioned in three separate reviews. Weekends draw partiers — one April 2026 account describes burnouts and day drinking after a peaceful midweek. Two reviews mention people living at the site. And trucks crossing the nearby bridge make noise at night. None of that is officially documented; all of it is first-hand.

Local insider tip: First, an ambiguity worth clearing up, because it trips people up. The Forest Service's Recreation Facilities Guide lists "Gregory Creek" with 18 sites, while Recreation.gov sells something called "Gregory Creek Group". These are the same place. Recreation.gov offers exactly one bookable campsite — Site 001, the whole loop — and the 18 is the number of individual pads inside it. There is no separate family campground here. Gregory Beach, on the shoreline nearby, is a different thing again: undesignated dispersed camping, first-come, pay on site, and that is where the swimming beach is. What you are booking is the shadiest campground on the Sacramento Arm, and the Forest Service is specific about it: moderately to thickly wooded with a mix of oak and pine that provide plenty of shade during the summer, over 80 percent cover. Recreation.gov's site record simply reads "Shade: Full". On an arm that bakes, that is the single best reason to choose it. The Forest Service is equally specific about what grows underneath — manzanita, blackberries, poison oak, tree fern, wild grape and native grasses. Poison oak is in the campground's own understory, not a general forest warning. It is also candid about privacy, which is rare. Recreation.gov's point-of-interest page says the understory provides limited privacy between sites. One listing puts it less diplomatically: campsites are close and cuddly. For a hundred people in one loop, that is probably the point. Two things to sort out before you go. The gate: Recreation.gov's instruction is to call 530-275-8113 one week before arrival for the entry gate code. And the water, which is the sharpest conflict on this page — the Forest Service states that potable water is not available at this site, while Recreation.gov lists drinking water and four other sources agree with Recreation.gov. Worth knowing that the Forest Service says the same "no potable water" line about Antlers, Lakeshore East and Nelson Point too, so this looks like a district-wide change its own pages have made and Recreation.gov has not mirrored. Arrive with water and treat a working tap as a bonus. Bear boxes are the other gap. Neither official page lists them here, which is conspicuous because the Forest Service pages for Nelson Point and Antlers both name bear boxes explicitly in their facility lists. Absence of mention is not proof of absence, but plan to store food in a hard-sided vehicle. There are no reviews of this campground. The Dyrt has two listings for it and both are empty, Hipcamp has none, Campflare has none, CampsitePhotos has no photos at all. The only real camper reporting in this area is for Gregory Beach next door, and it is about the beach and the road down to it rather than the campground. One rule for the group: no amplified sound.

Local insider tip: Hirz Bay 1 is the larger of the two group camps at Hirz Bay, and it has the strangest published inventory of any group site on this lake. The Forest Service description is short enough to quote in full: "Hirz Bay 1 group camp has a maximum capacity of 120 people. The camp has the following; two (2) large pedestal grills; one (1) large fire ring; two (2) large sinks with faucets and a paved parking lot with 21 spaces. The parking area is separate from the sleeping/camping area." Read that list again and notice what is not in it. There is no picnic table count. Hirz Bay 2, its smaller sibling for 80 people, is credited with nine tables. Dekkas Rock, for 60 people, gets eight large tables. For 120 people here, the Forest Service lists none at all. We cannot tell you whether that means there are no tables or simply that nobody wrote the number down, and there is no camper account anywhere that settles it. If your group needs tables, phone before you book. Now notice what is in it: two large sinks with faucets. On the same official page, the Forest Service states that potable water is not available at this site. Both statements are current and both are official. The likeliest reading is that the sinks carry non-potable water for washing dishes, but the Forest Service does not say that, and we are not going to say it for them. Bring every drop your group intends to drink — for 120 people that is a real logistics problem, not a footnote — and treat any tap you find here as wash water until somebody official tells you otherwise. The third thing to plan around is the cooking. One large fire ring and two large pedestal grills, for up to 120 people. That is one fire ring for a group the size of a wedding. Groups of this size that have booked here and cooked well have almost certainly brought their own propane; nothing in the terms forbids it, and the Forest Service does not provide anything beyond the ring and the two grills. Parking is the quiet catch. The Forest Service says 21 paved spaces. Recreation.gov's record for the single bookable unit — site 89727 — permits 25 vehicles. Plan against the 21 you can see rather than the 25 you are technically allowed, and remember the lot is deliberately set apart from the sleeping area: pleasant at two in the morning, tiresome when you are carrying 120 people's coolers. At $170 a night for the whole camp, this is the cheapest group site per head we have costed on Shasta Lake — about $1.42 per person at capacity, against $1.75 at Hirz Bay 2 and $2.83 at Dekkas Rock. If your group is genuinely large, the arithmetic points here. Two rules to pass to your people before you book. There is a locked gate, and you must call Shasta Recreation Company on 530-275-8113 about a week ahead for the combination — the same arrangement as Hirz Bay 2, Dekkas Rock, Moore Creek and Pine Point, so it is the norm on this road rather than a quirk. And Recreation.gov's terms for this site say, in capitals, no amplified sound. For a 120-person booking that is worth saying out loud before somebody loads a PA into the truck. The honest caveat, and it is a large one. Hirz Bay 1 has zero reviews on The Dyrt, zero on Campendium, and zero on every other major camping platform we checked. We found three entries on one smaller site, two of which contradict each other. Everything above comes from the Forest Service and Recreation.gov. Nobody has published a first-hand account of staying here, so if you read a confident description of what this camp feels like, ask where it came from.

Local insider tip: Hirz Bay 2 is the smaller group camp of the pair, and on almost every measure that matters it is the better-documented one. The Forest Service description, quoted in full: "Hirz Bay 2 group campground has a maximum capacity of 80 people. The camp has the following facilities; nine (9) picnic tables, one (1) large open fire ring, one (1) large pedestal grill, two (2) grate type fireplaces and two (2) hydrants. A paved parking area for 23 vehicles is provided and located away from the sleeping/camping area." Put that next to Hirz Bay 1 and the differences are stark. This camp takes 80 people to Group 1's 120, yet it has more parking spaces (23 against 21), a published table count (nine, where Group 1 has none listed at all), and three separate cooking points — a fire ring, a pedestal grill and two grate fireplaces — where Group 1 has a ring and two grills for half again as many people. It is also the closer of the two to the water. What it costs you is the per-head arithmetic. $140 a night for 80 people is about $1.75 each at capacity, against roughly $1.42 at Group 1. If your group is genuinely 100-plus, Group 1 is the cheaper booking and the only one that will hold you. If you are 40 to 80, this is the better camp by a distance. The water question here has the same official contradiction as its neighbour, in a slightly different shape. The Forest Service states that potable water is not available at this site, and the same page lists two hydrants. A hydrant is not a drinking fountain and the Forest Service does not say what comes out of these. Bring all your drinking water and treat the hydrants as wash and firefighting water until somebody official says otherwise. Bear lockers are listed here, and Group 1's inventory does not list them. That is the single most useful difference between the two camps, and it is not academic: the one credible first-hand account we found of this campground describes a bear tearing open the garbage containers overnight. Use the lockers, and do not leave a cooler out because the bin is right there. Recreation.gov records the shade here as full. That is worth something on an arm that reaches into the hundreds in July, and it lines up with the Forest Service describing the wider Hirz Bay area as forested. Two catches to note before booking. Recreation.gov's site record for the single bookable unit (site 67804) caps you at 20 vehicles, while the Forest Service says the lot holds 23 — so here the published parking is larger than the permitted vehicle count, the reverse of the mismatch at Group 1. Book to 20. And there is a locked gate: call Shasta Recreation Company on 530-275-8113 about a week ahead for the combination, the same as at Group 1, Dekkas Rock, Moore Creek and Pine Point. One rule to pass on before somebody loads a PA into a truck: Recreation.gov's terms for this site say, in capitals, no amplified sound. The caveat. This camp has one substantive first-hand review that we could find anywhere — the bear account above — and nothing on The Dyrt or Campendium. Everything else on this page comes from the Forest Service and Recreation.gov. That is thin evidence for a group booking, so call if anything here is load-bearing for your plans.

Local insider tip: Forty-six sites is a lot of choice, and the per-site records reward reading them. Site 9 is the standout for anything long — 50 feet, paved, double-rated, and one of only two true pull-throughs on the whole campground. Site 10 is the other. Everything else is a back-in, and the sites are not all level, so bring blocks. The ten doubles are 9, 20, 27, 29, 35, 36, 40, 42, 45 and 46. Site 27 has a repeat visitor who has booked it three years running and calls it the most spacious. Site 46 gets named for privacy and for sitting close to both water and bathrooms. Site 35 is the only one the Forest Service itself labels secluded — though reviewers also report yellow jackets and bear activity there specifically. Site 45 sits right at the Hirz Bay trailhead. Site 21 is the one people complain about. Twenty-four sites carry a full shade rating, which in a place that regularly hits 100°F is the single most useful filter. Sites 16, 18, 24, 26, 28, 37, 39, 43 and 45 are nearest the trail down to the water. Two things to know before you book. The bears here are habituated and active — one camper watched a roughly 500-pound black bear work the lockers at 4am, another party left early after repeated visits, and several people report finding broken lockers. Check yours on arrival and report it if it does not latch. And the poison oak is genuinely everywhere, including inside the sites, which matters most on the unmaintained scramble down to the lake. The other recurring complaint is late-night noise from other campers. Site 6 is designated as the host site, but reviewers repeatedly describe it as unstaffed, and quiet hours going unenforced. On water: the Forest Service page says no potable water is available, while Recreation.gov says there is, and eighteen individual site records mention a faucet next to the site. Campers report working spigots. The infrastructure is clearly there — but the manager's own page says otherwise, so carry your own and treat a working tap as a bonus. The ranger station is 530-275-1587.

Local insider tip: Start with the thing that confuses everybody. The Forest Service publishes ONE page called "Jones Valley Inlet Shoreline Campground." Recreation.gov publishes TWO separate facilities: Jones Valley Inlet Dispersed Area (10157273, this page) and Jones Valley Inlet West Dispersed Area (10157316). Each holds twenty numbered dispersed camping sites and twenty day-use picnic sites. No source reconciles the one against the two. If you are paying by app, check which facility the sign in front of you names, because they are billed separately. The fee here is per vehicle, not per site. Recreation.gov states it outright — "this area is vehicle specific and charges for each vehicle." That changes the maths for a group arriving in three cars, and it is different from how the developed campgrounds down the road work. Winter is free, and that is the genuinely useful thing to know. From roughly mid-September to mid-May no fees are due. The catch is that the portable restrooms and trash service are seasonal too — the Forest Service gives that window as March 1 to October 31 — so free winter camping is pack-in, pack-out camping with no facilities at all. Sanitation is your responsibility from November 1 through the end of February. Now the contradiction we cannot resolve for you, and it is on a single official page. The Forest Service says this area is "open to shoreline camping year round." The same page says camping anywhere below the high water mark "is prohibited between November 1st and March 1st." And the same page again says camping may close December 1 to 31. Those three statements do not fit together. Recreation.gov meanwhile describes free winter dispersed use across exactly that period. If you are planning a winter trip, call the Shasta Lake Ranger Station on 530-275-1587 rather than trusting any of it, including us. Informal mooring is allowed when the lake is high enough, which is the real draw — you can beach a boat at your camp. When it is not high enough, campers describe a long walk: one wrote that the water was very low and another that it was a trek across the road and down the hill. There are no refunds for low water, and Recreation.gov says so explicitly. Bring a hard-sided food container. Recreation.gov's standing note for every Jones Valley facility is that wildlife is frequent and all food must be kept in approved containers, and no official listing shows bear boxes at these dispersed sites. Poison oak is abundant throughout this forest — that is Recreation.gov's wording, on this facility's own page.

Local insider tip: West is the closer one. That is the single fact that should decide between the two Jones Valley Inlet shoreline areas: Recreation.gov puts the boat ramp about 1 mile from here and about 2 miles from the Inlet area next door. If you are towing a boat and launching daily, that difference is the whole argument. Everything else is near-identical, which is why people get them mixed up. The Forest Service publishes a single page covering "Jones Valley Inlet Shoreline Campground." Recreation.gov splits the same shoreline into two separately billed facilities — Jones Valley Inlet Dispersed Area (10157273) and Jones Valley Inlet West Dispersed Area (10157316, this one). Each has twenty numbered dispersed camping sites and twenty day-use picnic sites, and West additionally carries a general unnumbered dispersed listing. No official source explains the split. Read the sign in front of you before you pay through the app, because paying the wrong facility is easy. The fee is per vehicle, not per site. Recreation.gov says the area is vehicle specific and charges for each vehicle, so a group in three cars pays three times. This trips people up who are used to the per-site pricing at the developed campgrounds a mile up the road. Winter is free here, in Recreation.gov's own words: pack in, pack out in winter months, typically mid-September to mid-May, with no fees due during that time. The trade is that the portable restrooms and trash service are seasonal, so free camping is also facility-free camping. Note that the Forest Service's page for this shoreline contains three statements about winter that do not reconcile — year-round shoreline camping, a prohibition below the high water mark from November 1 to March 1, and a possible closure December 1 to 31. Call 530-275-1587 before a winter trip. There is almost no camper-generated content about West specifically. Everything published about the "Jones Valley Inlet" reviews online appears to describe either the other Inlet area or, in at least one case, Lower Jones Valley Campground — one review site hosts its Jones Valley Inlet page at a URL slug ending "jones-valley-lower" and describes a small campground with 10 to 12 sites and clean bathrooms, which does not match a twenty-site dispersed shoreline. Treat third-party reviews of this shoreline with suspicion. Bring a hard-sided food container. Wildlife is frequent here per Recreation.gov and no official listing shows bear boxes at these dispersed sites. Poison oak is abundant throughout the forest — Recreation.gov's own wording on this facility.

Local insider tip: The two yurts are the reason to know this campground, and they are not interchangeable. Both sit in Loop 2 on the lakeside, both overlook the water. Site 020 has two full-size beds in pine furniture, sleeps four, and takes a 45-foot vehicle. Site 022 sleeps five on a futon plus a twin-over-full bunk, sits next to a historic stone fireplace, and is the closest to both the water tap and the restroom — the better choice with kids. Site 020 is the better choice for a couple or if you are towing. What nobody tells you until you arrive: there is no heat, no air conditioning and no electricity inside either yurt, and linens are not provided. Bring all your own bedding and a lantern. In July and August, when Lakehead averages over 90°F, an unpowered canvas yurt is a real planning decision. Dogs are not allowed inside the yurts, though they are fine outside in a tent or kennel. Yurt check-out is noon, not the 2pm campsite check-out. And this one has actually cost people their booking: site 020 requires you to call 530-275-8113 a week ahead to get the entry code. A camper in June 2025 missed that detail and could not get into the yurt they had paid for. Put the call in your calendar the day you book. For regular sites, the consensus pick is 15 — spacious, good view, easy lake access, and one camper spent fourteen nights there. Site 17 is a double for sixteen people, described officially as sunny and mostly secluded, which is a useful reminder that shade and privacy do not always come together here. Site 13 is the shady lakeside one. Sites 10 and 12 are the only two pull-throughs in the campground. Site 11 is wheelchair accessible. Avoid site 2 — reviewers report sites too close together, poison oak everywhere and no lake access. The raspberry-and-grass undergrowth in the official description is real, and so is the poison oak hiding in it, which Recreation.gov posts as an official notice. Bears too, with bear-proof containers on site. Two more honest notes. Restroom cleanliness reviews swing wildly from spotless to disgusting depending on when you catch it. And two separate 2024 campers arrived to find their reserved site already occupied — screenshot your confirmation.

Local insider tip: Lower Jones Valley is the only developed, reliably open campground in the Jones Valley cluster, and it is small — eleven sites, first-come, no way to book ahead. On a summer weekend that is a gamble; midweek and in the shoulder seasons it is the quiet corner of a busy lake. It is also the only one of the three Jones Valley facilities with drinking water. Upper Jones Valley's own Forest Service page says there is none, and the Inlet shoreline areas have none either. If you are camping this arm and want a tap, this is it. A naming quirk that will confuse you at the kiosk: Recreation.gov lists the nine single sites as "Standard Overflow Single" and "Standard Overflow Single 1" through "8." Nothing about this campground is overflow — that is Upper Jones Valley's role, and the label here appears to be a data artifact. The two double sites are not listed individually at all, so their site numbers are not published anywhere we could find. There is also an internal contradiction on Recreation.gov itself worth knowing before you drive out: the facility page says first-come only and no advance payments, while the individual site pages render a date-availability widget that reads as bookable. The Forest Service and the facility page agree it is first-come. Do not turn up expecting a reservation to have held. What you get physically: paved spurs and tent pads, which is a real step up from Upper Jones Valley's unpaved parking, plus a bear box at every site. The campground sits in a small canyon adjacent to the lake — the concessionaire puts the water about 300 yards away at full pool, and that walk lengthens as the lake drops. The Clikapudi Trail trailhead is 50 yards east of the campground. It is a 7.5-mile loop back to the boat ramp parking lot, open to hiking, mountain biking and horses, with a separate one-mile advanced bike loop. Carry water — there is none on the trail and the summer heat here is severe. The Forest Service spells it "Clickipudi" on one page and "Clikapudi" on another; same trail. Camper evidence is thin. The Dyrt has no reviews at all for this campground. An aggregator reports 3.74 stars across 54 reviews with recurring complaints about bathroom cleaning, night noise from parties and trash not being emptied — but that same aggregator gets the fees and the reservability of this campground wrong, so we would not lean on its numbers.

Local insider tip: There is a railroad trestle directly over this campground, and neither the Forest Service nor Recreation.gov mentions it. Four of the nine reviews that exist lead with it. "At first glance I saw the bridge and thought oh wow that's a cool bridge that is no longer in use but I couldn't have been more wrong... bring some earplugs if you want to sleep through the night." Another camper is kinder about it: "Yes there are occasional trains as there is a train trestle above your head lol otherwise it's just the breeze through the pines." It is an active line. It is the defining fact about staying here and it appears on no official page. That aside, this is a cheap, pretty, waterfront spot ten minutes off the freeway, and the campers who like it like it a lot. The tent area sits on a peninsula behind a permanently closed gate — you park in a pull-off lot with room for two or three big rigs and carry your gear a short way in. Below the peninsula a paved road runs down into the reservoir, which at low water opens a long flat with, in one camper's words, "tons of parking for big rigs". Fees are $17 a night and $12 for day use on the current Forest Service page, and — this is the part people miss — Recreation.gov states that "this area is vehicle specific and charges for each vehicle". Per vehicle, not per site. You pay at an iron ranger with cash or a check, or through the Recreation.gov app's Scan and Pay. There are no reservations, no advance payment, and you must be physically present to claim a spot. Older listings still show $15 and $10; those are superseded, not a conflict. Now the fire rule, which is the most consequential thing on this page and which no other site publishes. Lower Salt Creek is not listed in Exhibit A of Forest Order 14-26-07, the fire restrictions order running 1 July to 31 December 2026 — no Shasta Lake shoreline area is; the word "shoreline" does not appear in the order at all. Under it, a fire outside a listed developed site is prohibited. The one exemption that fits is for holders of a valid California campfire permit, who may build a fire "within 10 feet of Shasta Lake, Trinity Lake, Iron Canyon Reservoir and at least 50 feet from any vegetation". So: down on the bare shoreline, permit in hand, or not at all. One camper reports rock fire rings up in the tent area; nothing official confirms or denies them, and under the current order they cannot be used regardless. We have corrected two things other listings get wrong, including our own earlier draft. The Forest Service page for this site says nothing about picnic tables or fire rings — that sentence belongs to the Beehive Point page and has propagated across databases. And the elevation figures in circulation are junk: 1,085 and 1,082 feet trace to each other, 1,067 is Recreation.gov's description of the lake's full pool, and the USGS elevation service returns about 1,053 feet at the published coordinates, which is fourteen feet below full pool — i.e. underwater when the lake is full. We show no elevation. The honest read on the reviews: nine of them, across two platforms, and they are mixed. Two campers describe leaving because of noise — fireworks and music on one night, an unbearable train on another. One reports gear stolen from the site. One reports "people practicing their screaming most of the evening, people shooting guns and the bangs echoing around and over the lake". Others woke to what they call a gorgeous waterfront and the best free spot in an area where RV parks charge a hundred dollars. Both accounts are of the same place.

Local insider tip: Start with the thing that decides your trip: Madrone is closed, and has been since 23 November 2024. Forest Order 14-24-25 shuts it "to provide for public safety" through 31 December 2026. There is no published reopening date earlier than that, and the Forest Service's own recreation page for the site carries the alert. The reason is the Shoe Fire. It started at 1:18pm on 9 October 2024 on Fenders Ferry Road, adjacent to this campground, and burned 5,124 acres before it was fully contained on 9 November. CAL FIRE's incident record lists the cause as "Undetermined". What makes the closure notable is what happened next: the broad Shoe Fire area closure issued on 18 October 2024 was terminated, reopening the rest of the burn scar to the public. Madrone alone stayed shut. When a forest reopens everything around a site and keeps that one site closed for another two years, the hazard is at the site itself — burned trees over the camping area is the usual reason, though the order does not say so and we are not going to put words in it. One more piece of chronology, because it gets muddled online. The 2025 Green Fire is a different fire. Its closure of campgrounds and trails north of the Pit River expired at the end of January 2026. That order is finished. Madrone's is not, and it predates Green by nine months. Now the thing almost every listing gets wrong: this is not a Shasta Lake campground. The Forest Service states flatly that there is no lake access from this facility. It sits east of the lake, eighteen miles up an unimproved dirt road, and the water it is near is a creek, not the reservoir. If you came here from a Shasta Lake search expecting to launch a boat, this is the wrong page — Jones Valley and Hirz Bay are the arms you want. What it actually is, in the Forest Service's own words, is a remote, forested and shady camp pitched as "a perfect home base for your OHV adventures", and the same page notes it is "very popular in the fall during hunting season". That is an unusually candid piece of official writing and it tells you the real clientele: quad riders and hunters, not families with a ski boat. It is free, first-come, with vault toilets and no potable water. The specifications below need a caveat. The Forest Service does not publish a site count or an elevation for Madrone. The ten sites shown here come from secondary listings and the 16-foot trailer figure from an aggregator, not from the Forest Service; we show them because they are the only figures that exist, not because we can vouch for them. The elevation we have left blank altogether — the 1,500 feet you will see quoted around the web traces to nothing we could find. And while the campground is closed there is nobody to phone and check with. If you want this profile and you want it now, look at Chirpchatter. It is the sister campground further down the same road — about four miles from here in a straight line, and five or six more road miles past the Madrone turning — and the Forest Service gives it word-for-word the same description. It has no closure order against it, the Forest Service lists it as open year round, and unlike Madrone it appears in Exhibit A of the 2026 fire order, so campfires are still permitted there.

Local insider tip: Mariners Point is closed, and the more interesting fact is that nobody can currently tell you on what authority. The Forest Service's page for the campground carries one sentence: "Campground is closed due to a slide which has caused the road to fail." No date, no order number, no reopening date. The access road was separately shut by Forest Order 14-24-18, the Silverthorn Emergency Closure, signed on 13 August 2024 and effective "from August 14, 2024, through August 14, 2026". That order expired on 14 August 2026. We can find no successor order on the forest's alerts index, and the Forest Service's own alert page for the road closure has been deleted — it returns a 404, while its exact sibling, the Sugarloaf Creek Road closure signed the same day for the same two-year window, is still listed. The campground page, meanwhile, still says closed, and Recreation.gov shows no availability. That is the honest state of it: closed per the only agency page that addresses it, with the enforcing road order lapsed and no published replacement. If this campground matters to your plans, call the Shasta Lake Ranger Station on 530-275-1587 rather than trusting any website, ours included. The slide itself is older than the order and is not a storm story. Local reporting from autumn 2021 documents a landslide at Mariners Point that swallowed the ground under a water pump station serving around 500 Jones Valley customers — the ground had dropped four feet three inches and was still moving. By November 2021 the county's public works director was describing it moving "about an inch and a half a day" and extending the power feed thirty feet to buy a few more weeks. In March 2022 officials attributed the cause to the lake dropping rapidly in drought, on ground already prone to sliding because of ancient geology that predates the reservoir, and warned it would happen again. The Forest Order came almost three years after the slide began, and no published document explains that gap. Note also that Silverthorn Resort, the private marina on the same road, is open and taking bookings, with no road-closure notice anywhere on its site. Recreation.gov's directions place the campground turning immediately before the resort entrance, and the closure order's boundary "begins at the gate across Forest Road 33N85" — which reads as though the county-maintained road to the resort is fine and the gated Forest Service segment beyond it is what failed. No source states that outright, so treat it as our reading rather than fact. What it was when open: two group loops at the confluence of the Pit and Sulanharas Creek arms, taking both tents and RVs, at $130 a night per loop. Recreation.gov documents Loop 1 as taking 50 people and 10 vehicles; Loop 2's capacity is not published anywhere we could find. Vault toilets, picnic tables, fire rings and parking spurs, no drinking water, gate code required a week ahead from 530-275-8113, two-night minimum at weekends and three on holidays, and no amplified sound. The 16-foot rig limit is real — it comes from the Forest Service's own 2019 Recreation Facilities Guide, and a 2020 camper corroborated it the hard way: "The road up to the camp was insane if you have an rv or 5th wheel... There is nowhere to turn around." Two corrections to what we and others had. Our own listing said open year round; the 2019 guide gives the season as 15 May to 11 September, and no official source says year-round. And our note claiming good service on all three carriers was unsourced — no source publishes carrier coverage here at all, so we have removed it.

Local insider tip: Fourteen sites and no reservations makes this the one campground on the McCloud Arm where showing up is the plan. There is no booking window to win and no waiting list — you drive out, you look, you claim, you pay. That is either the appeal or the dealbreaker, and after a 17-to-20-mile drive with no cell service to check ahead, it is worth knowing which one it is for you before you leave the freeway. Recreation.gov's numbering will confuse you at the kiosk. The booking system splits the sites into "Double 1" through "Double 3" and "Standard 1" through "Standard 11" rather than running 1 to 14, while the photo archives and the posts on the ground appear to number straight through 1 to 14. Nobody publishes the mapping between the two. Read the post, not the app. Site-level detail is genuinely thin here — this campground has almost no camper-generated content online, and none of the 14 Recreation.gov site records carries a length, surface, shade or accessibility field. What we have is one site visit reporting favourites at sites 1, 2, 4 and 5, all sites shaded well by large oaks, moderate privacy where you see your neighbours but do not hear them, and sites large enough for an eight-person tent or several small ones. Every site overlooks the lake — some partial views, some lakefront. The Forest Service guidance is that the most scenic sites are on the lake and river side of the loop. Two things to bring because nobody will sell them to you. Firewood: there is no camp host. And water: Recreation.gov lists vault restrooms and water spigots, one camper confirmed clean bathrooms and working water in May 2021, but the Forest Service's own page says flatly that potable water is not available at this site. That is not boilerplate — the same agency writes "potable water is available" for Moore Creek, Dekkas Rock and Bailey Cove. Arrive full. The hazards are the standard Shasta foothill set plus one specific to here. Recreation.gov posts poison oak as abundant throughout the forest and requires food and scented toiletries in the bear lockers. Rattlesnakes are reported active in summer. And the canyon funnels wind — a site visit noted it gets windy in summer, which is worth thinking about for awnings and tarps. One camper found the bear boxes full of other people's trash and the cans overflowing, which is what happens without a host. The rig-length question is unresolved and we will not pretend otherwise. Recreation.gov's own text says about 35 feet; a legacy field on the same record says 16. See the FAQ.

Local insider tip: The single most important thing about booking Moore Creek has nothing to do with the campground: you must phone for a gate code at least a week before you arrive. Recreation.gov's wording is blunt — failure to do so could lead to a locked facility without access for a night or longer and no refund. That is Shasta Recreation Company on 530-275-8113. Three campgrounds on this arm work this way; Moore Creek, Pine Point and Dekkas Rock all sit behind a combination gate. There is a real gap in that rule, and we cannot close it for you. The notice is written for group reservation holders. Nothing published anywhere explains how someone in an overflow family site gets through the gate. If you are booking an individual site, ask about access on the same call. Moore Creek's practical advantage over its neighbours is water. The Forest Service states flatly that potable water is available here, Recreation.gov confirms drinking water, and CampsitePhotos includes a photograph of the water station. That is unusual on this arm — the Forest Service says there is none at Ellery Creek, none at Pine Point and none at McCloud Bridge, and at two of those the claim is disputed. Moore Creek's is not disputed by anyone. The rig limit is where it gets awkward. Recreation.gov's facility notice says an average maximum trailer size of 16 feet. The structured data on its own site record for the same campground says 30 feet. That is one booking system contradicting itself on one campground, and no source resolves it. Sixteen feet rules out most travel trailers; thirty would put Moore Creek in the same class as Hirz Bay. Call before you tow. On shade, Recreation.gov also disagrees with itself — the site record says full shade, the overview says partially shaded. The independent descriptions lean towards partial: oak and evergreen on a hillside. One rule that matters at a 90-person group camp: Recreation.gov posts "No Amplified Sound!" in the notices. If your group was planning a PA or a speaker stack, that is your answer. Finally, a caveat about everything you will read on this campground, including this page. The Dyrt, Campendium and Hipcamp all show zero reviews. We could not find a single first-hand camper narrative for Moore Creek. Site counts range from 12 to 14 across sources and no official count exists. This is a reservation-gated group camp that almost nobody writes about.

Local insider tip: Nelson Point is one of only three campgrounds on Shasta Lake that the Forest Service describes as operating on an as-needed-for-overflow basis, alongside Moore Creek and Pine Point. In practice that means it changes character with the season, and the two official sources do not agree on when. Recreation.gov says it is open for walk-ins from April 1 to May 13, then group rental by reservation from May 13 to September 11, and that individual family reservations are not accepted during the group season unless you book the whole campground. The Forest Service's own page gives the season as June 2 to September 12. Those cannot both be right. If you are planning a shoulder-season walk-in, call Shasta Recreation Company on 530-275-8113 before you drive. The group capacity is disputed too: 60 people on both Forest Service sources, 75 on Recreation.gov. And the site count ranges from 8 to 10 depending who you ask, with no source publishing individual site numbers at all. We have gone with the Forest Service's 8. Two things here are not disputed and both matter. There is no drinking water — the Forest Service and Recreation.gov agree, unusually for this district. And there is a locked gate: group reservation holders must contact the Shasta Recreation Office at least a week before arrival for the combination. What makes Nelson Point genuinely distinctive is how close it is. About a mile west of exit 698, then half a mile on Conflict Point Road. That is the shortest drive from the freeway of any developed campground on this stretch — Gregory Creek is four miles up the canyon from the same exit, Antlers and Lakeshore East are a mile off exit 702. For a late arrival, or for anyone who wants to be camped before dark after a long drive, that is worth real money. The obvious question is what a mile from Interstate 5 sounds like at 2am, and here we have to be straight with you: nobody has said. There are no reviews of this campground anywhere. The Dyrt has none, Campendium has none, Hipcamp has none, CampsitePhotos has neither photos nor reviews, and we found no forum or blog trip report. We can tell you the distance; we cannot tell you the noise. One thing the reviews vacuum does not cover is cell signal, where The Dyrt has genuine crowd-verified carrier data — T-Mobile excellent on 5G from four users, Verizon some coverage from seven, AT&T possible from fourteen. That is real reporting, and being a mile from the freeway is the likely reason. Poison oak is officially abundant here, in Recreation.gov's own words, and bear boxes are provided at every site because food must be kept in them.

Local insider tip: Be clear about what this is before you book it: twenty-two striped spaces on asphalt next to the overflow boat parking. The Park Service's own environmental assessment says it plainly — 22 sites on asphaltic concrete, no shade trees, no hookups, and lacking the amenities present at the tent sites including picnic tables and fire rings. A Campendium reviewer put it less kindly, objecting to paying a $25 entrance fee to park in a blacktop lot. So why do people book it anyway? Because of what is within a two-minute walk. This is the closest RV camping to a boat ramp anywhere in the park, with a marina renting 16-foot fishing boats, 24-foot pontoons, 26-foot deck cruisers, kayaks and paddleboards year-round. There is a store selling ice, firewood and snacks. There are flush toilets and hot showers. And the pump-out is free if you are a registered RV guest — non-guests pay $15. For a boater with a self-contained rig, the trade is obvious. Bring shade. This is the single most useful thing on the page. The Park Service's camping table describes Oak Bottom RV in two words — "abundant sunshine" — and its campground regulations page recommends bringing a shade structure because the vegetation was moderately to severely burned in the 2018 Carr Fire. Replacement oaks were planted in autumn 2020 and are still saplings. One camper recorded three consecutive days over 100 degrees. Bring quarters. The hot showers are coin-operated and take quarters only, and they are down at the beach rather than in the RV lot. The free showers are the beach rinse showers, which is a different thing. Two rules that catch people. Generators are capped at 60 decibels and must be off by 10pm, with quiet hours until 6am. And there is no day pass at Whiskeytown — arrive without an annual pass and you are buying the seven-day vehicle pass at $25 whether you stay one night or six. Food storage is a legal requirement here, not a suggestion. The Superintendent's Compendium requires food, garbage and cooking equipment to be in a bear-resistant locker or out of sight inside a hard-sided vehicle. There are no lockers at the RV spaces, so your rig is the compliant storage.

Local insider tip: The whole campground turns on one distinction: shoreline sites versus everything else. Seventeen sites are on the water. The Park Service's environmental assessment confirms they allow boat mooring, which means you can beach a boat at your campsite — a thing almost no developed campground anywhere offers. They cost $35 instead of $30, they are the sites with real shade because the lakeside vegetation survived the Carr Fire, and they are the ones people return for year after year. One camper complained about exactly that, saying it feels unfair that the same people get the waterfront spots every year. The other roughly 77 sites are a different experience. The Park Service's own assessment says sites sit 25 to 50 feet apart with minimal privacy, and identifies overcrowding and user conflict as reasons it wants to redesign the place. Campers back this up: the non-shoreline sites are close together, and the table, fire ring and bear box can sit in full sun all day, which one reviewer called brutal for afternoon food prep on a hot day. Another logged three straight days over 100 degrees. Bring a shade structure — the Park Service itself recommends it. Walk-in means walk-in, and people get caught. One camper wrote that they camp out of a 4Runner, did not realise, and had to go buy a tent. Sleeping in vehicles is not allowed. The Park Service gives the walk distance as 10 to 500 feet from the parking areas; campsitephotos says 50 to 250. Either way, some of it is a steep downhill trail — loaded on the way in, uphill loaded on the way out. Wheelbarrows are provided; grab one early. The most consistent complaint in the whole review corpus is restroom capacity. Two restroom buildings serve up to 94 sites at six people each, and campers describe lines after dark and again early morning. The showers are coin-operated, quarters only, and they are down at the beach — not in the campground. Free showers means the beach rinse showers, which is a different thing. Bear lockers are at every site, and using them is a legal requirement under the Superintendent's Compendium, not a courtesy. Since your vehicle may be up to 500 feet away and you cannot sleep beside it, the locker is your only practical compliant storage. Off-season is a completely different campground. One camper in early October counted three occupied sites out of ninety-odd.

Local insider tip: Two calls before you come, and the first one is non-negotiable. Recreation.gov's notice names the number inline: group reservation holders must contact the Shasta Recreation Office on 530-275-8113 at least one week prior to arrival to receive the combination code to access the campground, and failure to do so could result in the inability to reach the campground without a refund. There is a locked gate. Without the code you are turning a hundred people around. The same gap exists here as at Moore Creek: that notice speaks only to group reservation holders, and nothing published anywhere explains how an individual family-site camper gets through the gate. Ask on the same call. The second call is about water, and this is Pine Point's genuine unknown. The Forest Service states that potable water is not available at this site. Recreation.gov says vault toilets and drinking water are provided. California's Best Camping says piped water. Hipcamp lists potable water. CampsitePhotos not only lists drinking water but includes a photograph captioned "Water." Five sources against the land manager, one of them photographic. We have marked water as available on the strength of that, but the agency that runs the place says otherwise — so arrive with everything you need and treat a working tap as a bonus. Worth knowing: the Forest Service says exactly the same "no potable water" line about Ellery Creek, where campers have since reported working spigots, which suggests the flag may simply be stale across several pages on this arm. Pine Point is the biggest group camp on the McCloud Arm at 100 people and 28 vehicles, against Moore Creek's 90 and Dekkas Rock's 60. It takes a larger rig than either — 24 feet posted, against 16 at both of them — which makes it the practical choice for a group towing anything substantial. It also has the best-attested shade of the three, with oak and pine over the sites and independent descriptions of natural screening between them. Every one of those descriptions is site copy rather than a camper report, so weigh it accordingly. A rule to pass to your group: Recreation.gov posts "No Amplified Sound!" in the notices. And the caveat that applies to this whole page. The Dyrt, Campendium and Hipcamp all show zero written reviews for Pine Point. We found no first-hand camper account at all. Published site counts range from 14 to 16 and no official number exists. If you read a confident description of what it is like to camp here, ask where it came from.

Local insider tip: Two things make Ski Island unusual, and both are worth knowing before you commit a weekend to it. First, it is free. The Forest Service says outright that no fees are required, there are no reservations, and it does not appear on Recreation.gov at all — we checked the full Shasta-Trinity inventory and none of the four boat-in campgrounds are listed. There is no iron ranger and no app to pay through, because there is nothing to pay. Your only cost is the launch fee at the mainland ramp. Second, almost nobody has written about it. The Dyrt has zero reviews. Campendium and CampsitePhotos have no page for it at all. We found exactly one substantive first-hand account — a trip report from the first weekend of October 2024 — and most of what follows comes from it. That thinness is itself the story: this is a 29-unit campground that almost no one documents. What that account says, and it is the most practically useful thing on this page: the sites are UP from the water, not on it. The landing on the west side is a gradual slope to the trees, and getting gear to the site took several trips uphill, which the writer describes as nobody's favourite part. If you have read elsewhere that sites sit near the shoreline with direct water access, that claim comes from a page with no reviews on it and it conflicts with the only person who has actually described the walk. There is no dock and no mooring buoy. The method that camper used is the one to copy: two anchors, one off the stern in deeper water and one off the bow on shore, holding the boat a few feet off the beach. Facilities are real but minimal. Roughly half a dozen vault toilets around the island, described as rustic but clean and workable. Picnic tables — his site had two, which may mean it was a double, though no source confirms Ski Island has double sites. Fire rings — the Shasta Unit recreation map states the four boat-only campgrounds have tables, campfire rings and vault toilet facilities, which upgrades that from one camper's observation to an official one. No water of any kind: bring every drop. And no trash service at all — the Forest Service calls this a pack it in, pack it out facility, which is a real obligation on an island where nobody else will collect what you leave. Sites are numbered — that account references site 24 and site 8 — but no published map of the numbering exists. On solitude: he had the entire island to himself in early October. The Forest Service calls it very popular in summer. Both can be true.

Local insider tip: Read the closure notice at the top of this page before you plan anything around Upper Jones Valley. The Forest Service flags it as closed with hours listed as "open as needed," and the concessionaire describes it as an overflow campground — it opens when Lower Jones Valley fills, which in practice means summer weekends and holidays, if at all. There is no published reopening date and no Recreation.gov listing to check availability against. One phone call to 530-275-1587 saves you a 45-minute drive. If it is open, here is what you are getting. Eight single sites, unpaved parking spurs, a vault toilet, and a picnic table and fire ring at each site. That is the whole facility. The unpaved spurs are the clearest physical difference from Lower Jones Valley just downhill, which has paved spurs and tent pads. Water is the thing to get right, because the sources disagree and the disagreement runs the wrong way. The Forest Service's own page for this campground states plainly that potable water is not available. The concessionaire says there are water spigots. Campendium reports a drinking water spigot, and Hipcamp lists potable water as available. Three sources contradict the land manager. We publish "no water" because that is the conservative reading and the land manager's own statement — arrive with everything you need and treat a working tap as luck. Lower Jones Valley definitely has water. Bear lockers are the same story in miniature: the concessionaire lists them, the Forest Service does not. Recreation.gov's guidance for every Jones Valley facility is that all food must be kept in approved containers, so bring a hard-sided container or plan to store food in your vehicle. Size matters here more than anywhere else in the cluster. Sixteen feet is the Forest Service's number, twenty-five is the concessionaire's. Even the generous figure rules out most travel trailers. A camper who stayed described the place as clean and peaceful but noted a party spot about half a mile down the road with shouting and engine noise at odd hours. There is exactly one substantive camper review of this campground online. Treat everything you read about it, including this page, as thinly sourced.