Pine Point Campground

The facts that decide your trip

Max rig length

24 ft

Sites

15

Hookups

Dry Camping (no hookups)

Access

Drive-in

Nightly rate

$20–$160 / night

Season

May 10 – Sep 12

Elevation

1090 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 7.1 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 group campground set on a ridge above the McCloud Arm of Shasta Lake, which the concessionaire also opens as individual family sites on an as-needed basis. The group unit takes up to 100 people and 28 vehicles — the largest group capacity on this arm — and is reservable on Recreation.gov. Every campsite has a picnic table, grill, fire ring, tent pad, bear box and paved parking spur. Vault toilets. Drinking water is disputed: the Forest Service says there is none, Recreation.gov and three other sources say there is. No hookups, no showers, no dump station. Season runs May 10 to September 12, and group reservation holders must call for a gate code at least a week ahead.

Getting there

From Interstate 5 take exit 698 — Salt Creek from the north, Gilman Road from the south — and follow Gilman Road east along the McCloud Arm. Pine Point is near the top of the road, past Hirz Bay, Dekkas Rock, Moore Creek and Ellery Creek. The mileage is disputed across every source. The Forest Service says approximately 20 miles. Recreation.gov says 18. One guide says 17 and puts the campground 37 miles north of Redding. The Dyrt says 18. The Forest Service also assigns 20 miles to Moore Creek, which its own coordinates place about three miles closer to the freeway — so its figures cannot both hold. Plan on 17 to 18 miles and roughly an hour from I-5. The time matters more than the number. Campers report about thirty minutes for the first ten miles of Gilman Road to Hirz Bay, a sustained twenty miles an hour, which tells you what the curves are like. Add another twenty-five minutes or so to reach Pine Point. No official source describes the road's surface or grade anywhere, which is a real gap — though Recreation.gov permits 30-foot rigs at Hirz Bay and 35 at McCloud Bridge on the same road, so the road is not the binding constraint. The 24-foot campsite limit is. Get your gate code first. Shasta Recreation Company, 530-275-8113, at least a week before you travel. There is no cell service at the campground and none on much of the approach, so this cannot be sorted out from the car. Arrive self-sufficient. There is no dump station and the nearest is at Lakehead back on I-5. Bring your own drinking water regardless of what any source says about the taps here — the Forest Service says there are none. There is no camp store; the closest shop is about 23 miles away at Lakehead. Bring a hard-sided container or use the bear box at your site, because bears work this arm and poison oak is abundant.

40.92747, -122.24690 · Driving directions

Photos of the area

1 more photo

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Local deep dive

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.

Pine Point sits on a ridge above the McCloud Arm, near the far end of Gilman Road — the middle of Shasta Lake's three main arms, and the one where the freeway noise disappears entirely once you are ten miles in. Among its neighbours it is the large-group option. A hundred people and 28 vehicles is the biggest capacity on the arm, ahead of Moore Creek at 90 and Dekkas Rock at 60, and its 24-foot posted rig limit beats the 16 feet at both. It is seasonal, May to September, where Dekkas Rock runs year-round. And like Moore Creek and Dekkas Rock it sits behind a combination gate, which puts all three in a different category from Ellery Creek and McCloud Bridge further along, where you simply drive in and pay on arrival. Lake access is the thing nobody quantifies. No official source gives a distance to the water. California's Best Camping describes the campground as on a ridge above the arm while also saying campers may bring boats for direct lake access — two claims that sit awkwardly together, and we are flagging rather than reconciling them. No source states that mooring or beaching is permitted here, which is notable given the Forest Service explicitly says so for Ellery Creek and describes Dekkas Rock's sites as adjacent to the water. Treat the walk down as unknown and growing through the season, and check the live lake level at the top of this page. The nearest launch is Hirz Bay, about four miles south, which works to 95 feet of drawdown. That is the McCloud Arm's ceiling — for comparison, the Jones Valley and Centimudi ramps on the other side of the lake keep going to around 210 feet. On fire, the record here is specific and reassuring. The 2018 Hirz Fire burned 46,150 acres near Lakehead, and the San Francisco Chronicle reported afterwards that none of the lakeside campgrounds at Shasta Lake was affected, naming Pine Point among those open and clear alongside McCloud Bridge, Ellery Creek, Moore Creek and Dekkas Rock. The 2021 Salt Fire started in the Gilman Road corridor near the Salt Creek exit and forced evacuations along Gilman Road, but no source documents damage or closure at any of these campgrounds. The 2018 Delta Fire burned north and west of here and no source connects it to this arm. The Forest Service currently lists Pine Point as open with no alert against it. Two standing warnings do apply. Fire danger at Shasta Lake is rated High under the 2026 fire restrictions order, effective July through December 2026, and a forest-wide alert warns of heightened danger from falling dead trees. Fireworks are prohibited year-round, and an invasive mussel-free certification is required before launching any boat.

Questions people ask

Where these facts come from

• Shasta-Trinity National Forest — Pine Point Campground (group/family), no potable water · checked 2026-08-31
• Recreation.gov — facility 232765, gate code notice with phone number, 24 ft prose, drinking water · checked 2026-08-31
• Recreation.gov — group site record 67814, 100 people / 28 vehicles / 30 ft structured data · checked 2026-08-31
• CampsitePhotos — Pine Point, water station photo and 15-site count · checked 2026-08-31
• California's Best Camping — Pine Point, ridge setting and ramp distance · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Hirz Bay Public Boat Ramp, nearest launch and drawdown limits · checked 2026-08-31
• San Francisco Chronicle — Hirz Fire left Shasta Lake campgrounds unaffected, Pine Point named · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Shasta-Trinity alerts, 2026 fire restrictions and falling hazard trees · checked 2026-08-31
• California Data Exchange Center — Shasta Lake elevation, gauge SHA · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Shasta-Trinity Recreation Facilities Guide, the source of this campground's published elevation; its elevation column reports a small set of round, lake-referenced values across all Shasta Lake facilities rather than surveyed figures · checked 2026-09-01