Hat Creek
- Right now
- OpenListed open; its database flags it not open
- A night
- $16From, per site
- Sites
- 7812 on recreation.gov
- Season
- April 1 – October 31Open April 1 through October 31
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 4 notices
In the agency’s own words
Hat Creek is one of six campgrounds available in the Hat Creek Recreation Area, home to some of the area's best trout fishing. Scenic hiking trails and an active volcanic area can easily be accessed from the facility. Keep reading
Recreation
Hat Creek is popular for its trophy trout fishing. The cold waters of the creek allow for a refreshing play on hot summer days. Other popular activities in the area include wildlife viewing, hunting, backpacking, hiking and caving. A variety of day hikes are available in the area, including the Spatter Cones Nature Trail, which is located just across the highway from the campground. The 1.5-mile loop trail provides hikers with a unique opportunity to explore craters, cones and crevices, as well as other geologic features left by the Hat Creek Lava Flow. Nearby, visitors can take a self-guided tour of Subway Cave. The trail is less than a half-mile long and explores the underground world of a lava tube. Visitors are encouraged to bring flashlights for hiking through the cave.
Facilities
Hat Creek offers three group campsites that can accommodate up to 50 people each. Individual sites are also available on a first-come, first-served basis. Picnic tables and campfire rings with grills are provided, as are accessible flush and vault toilets, utility sinks and drinking water. The RV dump-station is located 1.5 miles north of the campground behind the Old Station Visitors Center.
Natural Features
The campground is situated next to Hat Creek in a mixed conifer forest at an elevation of about 4,390 feet. Pine needles, grasses and volcanic rocks cover the forest floor. Sites are widely spaced for privacy.
Nearby Attractions
The campground is located about a mile west of the town of Old Station, and 12 miles east of the northwest entrance to Lassen Volcanic National Park, where active, hissing fumaroles and boiling mud pots are continually shaping the landscape. The Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail can be accessed near the Spatter Cones Nature Trailhead.
What the agency tells you
Off-road vehicle use is prohibited within the campground
Click here for more information on the Lassen National Forest
Check out the forest's campground description for specific information to Fish Your National Forest
Everything else this campground posts · 1
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.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 78 · 3 group
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 45 ft
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…provided, as are accessible flush and vault toilets, utility sinks and drinking water. The RV…”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…and vault toilets, utility sinks and drinking water. The RV dump-station is located 1.5 miles north of…”
- Stay limit
- 14 nights
- recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Around the campground
- On the water
- Creek
- Fishing
- Night sky · 105th darkest of 1,201 in CA
- Bortle 2
- Fall color · reported 13 days ago, 23 km away
- Peak color
No reading yet, book on recreation.gov
recreation.gov lists 12 of the 78 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 · 13
What you actually pay
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rate for this season, $16 a night, plus one $8 recreation.gov reservation fee for the booking. A weekend here means Friday and Saturday night, booked once. Optional charges (an extra vehicle, a second tent, a dump-station fee) are listed separately and aren’t in this total.
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
79 records · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 3 mapped sitesAll 79 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. 78 of the 79 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| AREA HAT CREEK | 010 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 011 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 012 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 013 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 014 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 015 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 016 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 017 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 018 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 019 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 020 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 021 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 022 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 023 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 024 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 025 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 026 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 027 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 028 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 029 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 030 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 031 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 032 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 033 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 034 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 035 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 036 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 037 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 038 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 039 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 040 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 041 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 042 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 043 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 044 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 045 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 046 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 047 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 048 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 049 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 050 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 051 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 052 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 053 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 054 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 055 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 056 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 057 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 058 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 059 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 060 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 061 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 062 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 063 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 064 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 065 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 066 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 067 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 068 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 069 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 070 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 071 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 072 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 073 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 074 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | 075 | type not stated | $33.97 | |||
| AREA HAT CREEK | XXX | unnamed record | 45 ft | $33.97 | ||
| GRP | GS1 | group standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 224 ft | 382 ft | $80 |
| GRP | GS2 | group standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 250 ft | 173 ft | $80 |
| GRP | GS3 | group standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 224 ft | 340 ft | $80 |
| HAT | 001 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | $16 | ||
| HAT | 002 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | $16 | ||
| HAT | 003 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | $16 | ||
| HAT | 004 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | $16 | ||
| HAT | 005 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | $16 | ||
| HAT | 006 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | $16 | ||
| HAT | 007 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | $16 | ||
| HAT | 008 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | $16 | ||
| HAT | 009 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | $16 |
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 79 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Lost Creek GroupLassen Volcanic National Park · 8.2 miHonn CampgroundLassen National Forest · 8.3 miFrom Highways 44 and 89, go through Old Station and continue 1.5 miles west to the campground.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Old Station, CA
Typical weather
Typical October night 33°F, day 66°F.
Coldest night of the open season: typical April night 30°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 moreOutside the published season
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
Hat 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.