Gurnsey Creek
1Heads up1 fire 49 mi away
- Right now
- Listed not openA database flag with no reason and no date
- Sites
- 532 on recreation.gov
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 5 notices
In the agency’s own words
Gurnsey Creek Campground is located in the mountains of northern California. It offers access to a variety of nearby recreational opportunities, including hiking, fishing and picnicking. Keep reading
Recreation
The area provides access to plentiful hiking trails, picnic spots and rainbow trout fishing.
Facilities
Gurnsey Group is located within Gurnsey Creek Campground. This unique site offers 2 reservable "loops". GS Loop # 1 is $56/night, includes 7 individual campsites (Site #s 31-37) and can accommodate 56 people. GS Loop #2 is $112/night, includes 13 sites (Site 38-51) and accommodates up to 112 people. Each site has its own fire ring, picnic table, and parking spur. Gurnsey Creek is a gorgeous campground sitting in a forest of tall evergreens near Highway 36. Drinking water and restrooms are available. No utility hookups are provided. A water-filling station is located at the campground entrance. Parking is limited within the campground. NOTE: THESE GROUP SITES ARE AVAILABLE BY RESERVATION ONLY.
Natural Features
The campground is nestled in a mixed conifer forest in the Lassen National Forest at an elevation of 4,700 feet. It is located next to Gurnsey Creek.
Nearby Attractions
The campground is located 14 miles west of the town of Chester and Lake Almanor, where boating, fishing, sailing and water skiing are popular activities. The southwest entrance to Lassen Volcanic National Park is about 14 miles north. The park is known for its active hissing fumaroles and boiling mud pots that continually shape and alter the landscape.
What the agency tells you
Bears frequent the area; use appropriate containers for food and trash
Off-road vehicle use is prohibited within the campground
Click here for more information on the Lassen National Forest
Everything else this campground posts · 2
Don't Move Firewood: Protect California's forests from tree-killing pests by buying your firewood locally and burning it on-site. For more information visit firewood.ca.gov.
Please remember to check current Fire Restrictions.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 53 · 2 group
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 60 ft
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Yes, the record doesn't say what kind
- “Drinking water and restrooms are available.”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…of tall evergreens near Highway 36. Drinking water and restrooms are available. No utility hookups are…”
- Stay limit
- 14 nights
- recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, Creek
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Night sky · 210th darkest of 1,201 in CA
- Bortle 2
No reading yet, book on recreation.gov
recreation.gov lists 2 of the 53 campsites the agency files here. The rest aren’t on its booking system, so a reservation won’t get you one.
No availability snapshot inside the last 36 hours, so this page draws nothing rather than ageing a reading into fiction.
Watch for a cancellation
Full? Watch it.
One email when a night opens, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.
We read recreation.gov once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time a site in your window is free for the nights you asked for.
Scanners that check every few minutes exist, and most of them charge. This one is free, it reads the same calendar, and it won’t always be first.
Tell me when the season opens
Watch for the season to open
One email when the season goes on sale, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.
We check once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time the agency has that season on sale.
Scanners that check every few minutes exist, and most of them charge. This one is free, it reads the same calendar, and it won’t always be first.
We make nothing when you book. The link goes straight to the government.
Every line of the receipt · 12
What you actually pay
Who keeps the booking fee
The agency’s own policy text says the reservation fee and the cancellation processing fee are “retained by the reservation service contractor”, and that a campground concessionaire will decline to refund them because “they did not receive these fees”. Recreation.gov is run under contract by Booz Allen Hamilton. What share of your booking fee the contractor keeps isn’t published in any federal dataset we can read, so we print no number for it. Our reporting on the contract →
How we know this receipt · 5
rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Sep 10, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
54 records · the site map
All 54 records
The price is derived by CAMPANAC, not published per site: the per-night rate this campground publishes for each site’s own site type. 53 of the 54 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
Measured shade is NLCD Tree Canopy Cover 2024 (USDA Forest Service / MRLC) read at the site’s own coordinate, 27% canopy or more, and only for the sites the agency gave no Shade value. It never changes the agency’s own shaded count beside it.
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 001 | type not stated | 562 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 002 | type not stated | 573 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 003 | type not stated | 438 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 004 | type not stated | 449 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 005 | type not stated | 362 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 006 | type not stated | 216 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 007 | type not stated | under 10 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 008 | type not stated | 189 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 009 | type not stated | under 10 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 010 | type not stated | 66 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 011 | type not stated | 137 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 012 | type not stated | 242 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 013 | type not stated | 485 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 014 | type not stated | 653 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 015 | type not stated | 715 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 016 | type not stated | 562 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 017 | type not stated | 441 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 018 | type not stated | 524 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 019 | type not stated | 237 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 020 | type not stated | 379 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 021 | type not stated | 157 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 022 | type not stated | 261 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 023 | type not stated | 303 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 024 | type not stated | 342 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 025 | type not stated | 391 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 026 | type not stated | 430 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 027 | type not stated | 618 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 028 | type not stated | 730 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 029 | type not stated | 755 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 030 | type not stated | 724 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 031 | type not stated | 730 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 032 | type not stated | 883 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 033 | type not stated | 831 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 034 | type not stated | 931 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 035 | type not stated | 903 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 036 | type not stated | 1,023 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 037 | type not stated | 930 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 038 | type not stated | 1,102 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 039 | type not stated | 1,192 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 040 | type not stated | 1,121 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 041 | type not stated | 1,114 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 042 | type not stated | 1,064 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 043 | type not stated | 1,019 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 044 | type not stated | 997 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 045 | type not stated | 870 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 046 | type not stated | 869 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 047 | type not stated | 759 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 048 | type not stated | 878 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 049 | type not stated | 644 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 050 | type not stated | 807 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | 051 | type not stated | 679 ft | $33.97 | ||
| AREA GURNSEY CREEK | XXX | unnamed record | 99 ft | yes | $33.97 | |
| GURN | GS1 | group standard nonelectric | 60 ft | 1,173 ft | $56–$112 | |
| RAIN | GS2 | group standard nonelectric | 60 ft | 962 ft | $56–$112 |
The agency files 1 more record here that isn’t a site for the night. It types it MANAGEMENT rather than a campsite. It’s in the table above, marked for what it is, and it isn’t counted as a site.
OpenStreetMap has no toilet mapped within 1 km of this campground, so no site here carries a toilet distance. That’s a gap in the map, not a finding about the campground.
25 of 54 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
From the town of Chester, follow Highway 36 west for about 14 miles. Gurnsey Creek Campground is located on the right side of the highway, about 2 miles past the Highway 32 turnoff.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Mineral, CA
Typical weather
Typical October night 33°F, day 66°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 22°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.
Daily high and lowDays with 0.10 in or more
A normal is the 1991-2020 average for the month, not a forecast: about half of all Julys are colder than the July line. The seven-day forecast above answers the other question.
The land, and who answers for it
what threatens it · who answers for it
Roadless country, and what’s coming for it
You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.
Who answers for this land
Gurnsey Creek is in California’s 1st congressional district. Whoever holds it votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. See how its representative votes on public lands →
Our roster still carries Doug LaMalfa for this district and the current federal record doesn’t list them as sitting, so we’re not naming a representative here until the two agree.