Greens Creek Boat-In Campground

The facts that decide your trip

Max rig length

Not published

Sites

7

Hookups

Dry Camping (no hookups)

Access

Boat-in

Nightly rate

Free

Season

Open year-round

Elevation

1085 ft

Dump station

No

Potable water

No

What is actually on site

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

Nearest public camera

O'Brien · I-5 — about 3.8 mi from the campground

Camera operated by Caltrans District 2

Frame refreshes about every 5 min · feed last verified 6 days ago

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

Facility info

Seven boat-in units on the McCloud Arm of Shasta Lake — the smallest of the lake's four boat-access-only campgrounds, and the only one on this arm. The Forest Service describes it as popular with visitors who want to get away from the crowds. Vault toilets and picnic tables, plus campfire rings per the Shasta Unit recreation map; no piped water and no trash service, so it is a pack it in, pack it out facility. No fees, no reservations, no Recreation.gov listing. Open 24 hours a day, year-round. A 5.85-mile trail climbs out of the campground to the limestone ridge separating the McCloud and Sulanharas Creek arms.

Getting there

Boat access only. Hirz Bay Public Boat Ramp is the launch, and it is close — roughly 2.6 miles almost due north on the same arm by our calculation from the published coordinates. No source publishes an actual water distance, so treat that as a straight-line minimum. To the ramp: from I-5 take exit 698, Salt Creek/Gilman Road, turn right at the end of the off ramp and follow Gilman Road east approximately nine miles. The Forest Service puts it 20 miles northeast of Redding. Hirz Bay is paved with three ramps for varying lake levels, 61 paved lighted parking spaces, a courtesy dock and flush toilets, but no potable water. $18 per vehicle per day, day use only. Two fallbacks, and the choice depends entirely on the lake. Bailey Cove, off I-5 exit 695, is about 3.8 miles away but its two lanes close once the lake is 50 feet down. Packers Bay, on the Sacramento Arm, holds on to 115 feet of drawdown but is a much longer water route around O'Brien Point. Hirz Bay itself runs to 95 feet. So in a deep drawdown year Bailey Cove goes first, then Hirz Bay, and you are left approaching from the wrong arm. Is it paddleable? The Forest Service lists non-motorized boating for this site, which it does not do for Ski Island, and 2.6 miles is within range on a calm morning. But no source describes anyone paddling it, and the McCloud Arm gets heavy summer powerboat and houseboat traffic. Judge the wakes, not just the distance. Bring everything. No potable water at the campground and none at the Hirz Bay ramp either — Bailey Cove is the nearest ramp that has it. No trash service, so every scrap comes back out with you. A bear canister or a proper hang, since no Forest Service source confirms bear boxes here. And an invasive mussel-free certification for the boat, required under a standing forest order covering Shasta Lake. A campfire permit is required year-round on this forest for fires and for camping stoves — free, and issued online in minutes.

40.82592, -122.25363 · Driving directions

Local deep dive

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 Sulanharas 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.

The McCloud Arm is the limestone one. Grey walls formed from ocean sediments laid down 200 to 300 million years ago run along much of it, and the ridge above Greens Creek is where they show best — the Forest Service describes the trail passing through fantastic limestone formations at the top before dropping to the old mining community of Bully Hill on the Sulanharas Creek side. Against the other three boat-ins, the facilities are identical: vault toilet, picnic tables, campfire rings, no water, no trash, no fee, no reservations, open year-round, and none of them on Recreation.gov. What differs is arm, size and character. The Forest Service calls Ski Island and Gooseneck Cove very popular; Greens Creek and Arbuckle Flat both get language about visitors wanting to get away from the crowds. At seven units, Greens Creek is the smallest of the set by some margin. The 2026 fire restrictions order, running July through December 2026, names Greens Creek Boat-in Camp in Exhibit A as a developed site where campfires remain permitted — outside listed sites they are prohibited outright. The order also states that holding a California Campfire Permit does not exempt you from the prohibitions, though permit holders may run a portable gas or pressurized-liquid stove five feet clear of anything flammable, and may have a fire within ten feet of the lake and at least fifty feet from vegetation. On eagles: Shasta Lake holds about 30 nesting pairs, and the Forest Service asks visitors to watch from a distance during the January-to-July nesting season, noting that disturbance around a nest can cause birds to abandon it. Worth stating clearly, because it is a reasonable thing to assume otherwise — there is no eagle closure or wildlife closure anywhere on this forest at present. We checked the full alerts list. Fire history is the one thing we could not settle. The 2018 Hirz Fire burned 46,150 acres starting near Moore Creek east of Lakehead, and a good chunk of the McCloud Arm burned. Boat access to the arm north of Holiday Harbor was closed, and six campgrounds up Gilman Road were shut. Greens Creek is not named in any closure list we found, but it sits north of Holiday Harbor and so fell inside the described boat-access closure. Whether the fire perimeter itself reached the campground we could not determine — no perimeter map was obtainable. We are not going to tell you it was spared. Currently the Forest Service lists the site as open, with no alert against it. A note on the arm we have renamed here. Until 2022 the creek and the arm east of this one carried a name built on a slur; the Department of the Interior's Derogatory Geographic Names Task Force retired it on 8 September 2022, and the replacement — Sulanharas, from the Wintu language — was recommended by the Wintu Tribe of Northern California. Forest Service documents quoted on this page predate that change and use the older name. We use the current one.

Questions people ask

Where these facts come from

• Shasta-Trinity National Forest — Greens Creek Boat Campground · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Recreation Facilities Guide, Shasta-Trinity NF (7 units, smallest of the four) · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Shasta Unit recreation map (boat-in camps have tables, campfire rings and vault toilets; spillway elevation) · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Shasta Lake Trails brochure, Greens Creek Trail (5.85 mi, 1,230 ft climb, Bully Hill) · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Hirz Bay Public Boat Ramp, the nearest launch · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Bailey Cove Public Boat Ramp, the 50 ft drawdown fallback · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Current Conditions, year-round campfire permit requirement · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — 2026 Fire Restrictions Forest Order 14-26-07, Greens Creek named in Exhibit A · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Respect Wildlife: bald eagles nesting January to July, bear food storage · checked 2026-08-31
• The Dyrt — the single published camper review of this campground · checked 2026-08-31
• CAL FIRE — Hirz Fire 2018 incident record · checked 2026-08-31
• California Data Exchange Center — Shasta Lake elevation, gauge SHA · checked 2026-08-31