Ski Island Boat-In Campground

The facts that decide your trip

Max rig length

Not published

Sites

29

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
• Cell service
• Food storage required

Nearest public camera

Pit River Bridge · I-5 — about 3.1 mi from the campground

Camera operated by Caltrans District 2

Frame refreshes about every 5 min · feed last verified 7 days ago

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

Facility info

Twenty-nine boat-in units on an island in the Pit River Arm of Shasta Lake, reachable only by water. The Forest Service provides vault toilets and picnic tables and states there is no piped water; a camper report adds fire rings and counts about half a dozen vault toilets around the island. This is a pack-it-in, pack-it-out facility with no trash collection. There are no fees, no reservations and no Recreation.gov listing — you turn up, find an empty site and take it. Open 24 hours a day, currently listed as open, and described by the Forest Service as very popular during the summer months.

Getting there

There is no road. You arrive by boat, and which ramp you use is the first decision. Jones Valley Public Boat Ramp is the nearest at roughly 2.7 miles across the water — that is our own straight-line calculation from the coordinates the Forest Service publishes for each, not a figure any source states, and the real water route will be longer. Jones Valley is reached from I-5 exit 687: Old Oregon Trail for three miles, left on Bear Mountain Road for eight and a half miles to the Dry Creek Road junction, then left about three miles. It has four ramps for different lake levels, flush toilets, no drinking water, and works to roughly 210 feet of drawdown. Centimudi, near Shasta Dam off I-5 exit 685, is what the one published trip report actually used, and the writer describes a 20-minute boat ride to the island. It is further — around 8.2 miles straight-line — but has 105 parking spaces and flush toilets. Its current condition notice reports a high amount of driftwood at the ramp. Silverthorn Resort, on the same arm, describes Ski Island as east of the resort and suggests renting a fishing or patio boat there for the trip. No source publishes a distance from Silverthorn. Can you paddle it? No source says. The Forest Service lists only motorized boating under recreation opportunities for this campground. If the 2.7 miles from Jones Valley is right, a fit paddler could manage it in calm conditions — but that is our inference, not anybody's advice, and a loaded kayak crossing open reservoir water is a different proposition from the number suggesting it. What the Forest Service does warn: whether or not the access is difficult varies depending on the current lake level. Check the live level at the top of this page. Silverthorn adds two hazards for the wider Pit Arm — standing dead trees, or snags, that pose a navigation hazard, and no services at all beyond Jones Valley Inlet. Water-skiing is prohibited past Arbuckle Flat further up the arm. Load for the walk, not just the crossing. Everything comes off the boat and goes uphill. Fewer heavy loads beat many light ones, and a cart is useless on that slope. Bring all your water, a hard-sided container for food, bags to pack every scrap of rubbish back out, and an invasive mussel-free certification for the boat — a forest order prohibits transporting golden, zebra and quagga mussels.

40.76068, -122.25946 · Driving directions

Local deep dive

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.

Ski Island is the largest of Shasta Lake's four boat-in campgrounds by a wide margin — 29 units against Gooseneck Cove's 12, Arbuckle Flat's 11 and Greens Creek's 7, more than the other three combined. All four are free, unreservable, vault-toileted and waterless, and all four are named in the 2026 fire order as developed sites where campfires are still permitted. It is also the only one anyone describes as an actual island. Silverthorn Resort calls it a three-acre island east of the resort. Here is the honest gap: no source we could find states whether Ski Island connects to the mainland at low water, becomes a peninsula, or can be walked to from shore. We looked specifically and found nothing, so we are not going to tell you either way. What we can tell you about the water is the scale of the drawdown you are dealing with. Full pool is 1,067 feet and the Forest Service lists this campground's elevation as 1,085 — roughly eighteen feet above a full lake, which is why the sites stay dry and why the haul from the beach lengthens as the season goes on. The one camper account, in early October, describes exposed dirt that would be underwater at full pool and says they were thankful the level was not any lower. For scale on how far Shasta can drop: the Jones Valley ramp is engineered to keep working through 210 feet of drawdown. One arm-level oddity worth flagging. The Forest Service places Ski Island on the Pit River Arm; Silverthorn Resort files it under the McCloud Arm on its own site. The Forest Service should win, but a local operator disagreeing is worth knowing if you are navigating by someone's directions. The nearest drive-in campground, Mariners Point, is about 0.6 miles away — and it is currently closed, with the Forest Service citing a slide that has caused the road to fail. Do not plan a land-based fallback around it. Fire history nearby: the Jones Fire of October 1999 ignited at a campsite on the Clikapudi Trail east of Jones Valley, burned 26,200 acres and destroyed 954 structures. The 2021 Salt Fire burned in the Gilman Road corridor at the far north end of the lake, not here. No source we found documents Ski Island itself ever being closed, by fire or anything else — which is not the same as saying it never has been. Stay limits: Forest Service orders cap camping in a developed recreation site at 30 days total per calendar year. Fireworks are prohibited year-round.

Questions people ask

Where these facts come from

• Shasta-Trinity National Forest — Ski Island Boat Campground (no fees, vault toilets, pack it in pack it out) · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Recreation Facilities Guide, Entire Forest (29 units, elevation 1,085 ft) · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Jones Valley Public Boat Ramp, nearest launch · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Centimudi Public Boat Ramp · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Boat Ramps at Shasta Lake (ROG PDF), $16 launch figure · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — 2026 Fire Restrictions Forest Order 14-26-07, Ski Island named in Exhibit A · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Forest-wide camping stay limits · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Mariners Point Group Campground, closed by road slide · checked 2026-08-31
• Joel Meyers — boat camping on Ski Island, the only substantive first-hand account · checked 2026-08-31
• Silverthorn Resort — three-acre island, Pit Arm snags and services · checked 2026-08-31
• California Data Exchange Center — Shasta Lake elevation, gauge SHA · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Shasta Unit recreation map (boat-in camps have tables, campfire rings and vault toilets) · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Shasta Lake Boating Safety Map (no garbage collection at boat-in campgrounds) · checked 2026-08-31