Dekkas Rock Group Campground

The facts that decide your trip

Max rig length

16 ft

Sites

1

Hookups

Dry Camping (no hookups)

Access

Drive-in

Nightly rate

$160 / night

Season

Open year-round

Elevation

1085 ft

Dump station

No

Potable water

Yes

What is actually on site

• Shade canopy
• Dog friendly
• Vault toilets
• Potable water
• Swimming
• Fishing
• Picnic tables
• Fire rings
• Food storage required

Nearest public camera

Salt Creek · I-5 — about 5.8 mi from the campground

Camera operated by Caltrans District 2

Frame refreshes about every 4 min · feed last verified 6 days ago

Useful for road surface, smoke and haze — not for checking your site.

Facility info

A single group unit on the McCloud Arm of Shasta Lake, taking up to 60 people and 18 vehicles, with sites Recreation.gov describes as adjacent to the lake. The Forest Service lists eight large tables, two large pedestal grills, one large family barbecue grill and two campfire rings, on four unpaved parking spurs, with an additional unpaved eight-space lot for boat trailers and overflow. Vault toilets and potable water. Bear-proof food lockers per Recreation.gov. No hookups, no showers, no dump station and no individual sites — the whole campground books as one reservation. Open year-round by reservation, and gated: you must call for the combination a week before you arrive.

Getting there

From Interstate 5 take exit 698 — Gilman Road from the south, Salt Creek from the north — turn east and follow Gilman Road along the McCloud Arm. The two official sources disagree on how far. The Forest Service says approximately 12 miles; Recreation.gov says 10. The other mileages along the same road favour the Forest Service: Hirz Bay campground and ramp are both given as 9 miles, the Hirz Bay Trail guide puts its trailhead at 10, and the Dekkas Rock Day Use Area — which sits between Hirz Bay and this campground — is given as 11 miles in one place and 12 in another on its own page. Dekkas Rock Group is unambiguously past all of those, so plan on 11 to 12 miles and about 35 minutes from the freeway. Campers on this road consistently report about thirty minutes for the first ten miles, a sustained twenty miles an hour, which tells you what the curves are doing. No official source describes Gilman Road's surface or grade. The road is not your constraint here — the 16-foot spur limit is. Do not leave without the gate code. Call Shasta Recreation Company on 530-275-8113 at least a week before you travel. There is a locked gate and, by two guides' accounts, no refund if you cannot get through it. Bring your reservation confirmation number or letter as well; Recreation.gov requires it at the site. Arrive with empty holding tanks — there is no dump station, and the nearest is reported to be at Lakehead, about fifteen miles west. Fill your fresh water anyway, though Dekkas Rock is one of the few campgrounds on this arm where a working tap is not in dispute. Bring firewood bought locally, since transporting it is discouraged for pest reasons, and expect to use the bear lockers. Do not confuse this with the Dekkas Rock Day Use Area a mile short of it — that is a separate five-table picnic site, free, year-round, no reservations, and it is where the Hirz Bay Trail crosses. The 2026 fire order lists them as two distinct sites.

40.87452, -122.23420 · Driving directions

Photos of the area

1 more photo

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Local deep dive

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. An older edition of the Forest Service trails guide names a Hirz Bay amphitheatre as the trail's other end, but no current official page for any Hirz Bay facility mentions one, so do not plan around it. One review's mention of an industrial-size sink is likewise 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.

Dekkas Rock sits on the McCloud Arm, the middle of Shasta Lake's three main arms, on the road that also serves Hirz Bay, Ellery Creek, Moore Creek, Pine Point and McCloud Bridge. Ten miles east of the freeway the traffic noise stops entirely. The walk from here is the Hirz Bay Trail, and it is the good kind of easy. The Forest Service's trails guide calls it a scenic walk that follows the shoreline crossing several cool, shady creeks, with lake views most of the way, and recommends it on warm summer evenings or cool mornings. The trails guide describes it running between a Hirz Bay amphitheatre and this campground — though we should flag that no current official page for Hirz Bay Campground, either Hirz Bay group camp or the Hirz Bay boat ramp mentions an amphitheatre at all, so we cannot confirm one still exists. Its length is disputed: the trails guide says 1.6 miles, Recreation.gov's page for this campground repeatedly calls it the 1-mile Hirz Bay Trail. Either way it is rated easy and it ends at your camp. On the name: we could not find out where "Dekkas" comes from. There is a Dekkas Creek nearby, and no source we could reach — place-name references, ethnographic material, or the Forest Service itself — explains the origin or describes the rock formation the campground is named for. We would rather say that than guess. Two hazards are officially documented for this campground. Poison oak is abundant throughout the forest, in Recreation.gov's words, and all food must be kept in approved containers because of bears — lockers are provided. Notably, no source we found mentions rattlesnakes or mosquitoes at Dekkas Rock specifically, and with no camper reviews there is no anecdote to draw on either. We are not going to import warnings from other campgrounds. Campfires are currently permitted here. The 2026 fire restrictions order, running July through December 2026, prohibits fires outside listed developed sites and names both Dekkas Rock Group Campground and Dekkas Rock Picnic Area in Exhibit A. That is why the two fire rings remain usable while dispersed fires are banned. Penalties for a violation run to $5,000 for an individual. On fire history: the 2018 Hirz Fire burned 46,150 acres near Lakehead and takes its name from Hirz Mountain and Hirz Bay, immediately west of here — but no source documents whether this campground burned or closed, and we are not going to assert either. The 2021 Salt Fire started near the Salt Creek exit at the foot of Gilman Road and forced evacuations along Gilman Road itself; again, no source records damage here. The Forest Service currently lists the site as open with no alert against it. Lake access is the soft spot. Recreation.gov says the sites are adjacent to the lake, and the campground carries an eight-space lot specifically for boat trailers — but no source states there is a dock, mooring or launch here, and none gives a distance to the waterline at any lake level. The most honest description we found is from the camping writer Tom Stienstra, quoted in a 2019 site visit: in late summer and autumn when the lake level drops, it can be a hike from the camp down to the water's edge. Check the live level at the top of this page.

Questions people ask

Where these facts come from

• Shasta-Trinity National Forest — Dekkas Rock Group Campground (year-round, potable water, unpaved spurs, facility inventory) · checked 2026-08-31
• Recreation.gov — facility 232754, gate code notice and 16 ft trailer limit · checked 2026-08-31
• Recreation.gov — group site GS1 (67227), 60 people / 18 vehicles, gravel back-in · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Dekkas Rock Day Use Area, the separate picnic site short of the campground · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Hirz Bay Public Boat Ramp, nearest launch and drawdown limits · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Shasta Lake Trails guide, Hirz Bay Trail · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — 2026 Fire Restrictions Forest Order 14-26-07, Dekkas Rock Group and Picnic Area both in Exhibit A · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Forest-wide camping stay limits order 14-25-24 · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Recreation Facilities Guide, Shasta-Trinity NF · checked 2026-08-31
• Campgrounds 360 — the one substantive site visit, August 2019 · checked 2026-08-31
• California Data Exchange Center — Shasta Lake elevation, gauge SHA · checked 2026-08-31