(Lake Alpine) West Shore
- Right now
- Listed not openA database flag with no reason and no date
- A night
- $32From, per site
- Sites
- 2524 on recreation.gov
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 11 notices
In the agency’s own words
West Shore Campground sits directly off the north shore of Lake Alpine. It is walking distance to the boat launch, rentals, and Lake Alpine Lodge. Keep reading
Recreation
Lake Alpine provides a wide variety of recreational opportunities: fishing, hiking, biking, kayaking, paddle-boarding, boating, OHV trails, swimming, rock climbing, and wildlife watching. Interpretive programs are offered by Forest Service rangers during the summer months.
Facilities
Campsites with room for up to 6 people, 3 tents, and 2 vehicles per campsite. Picnic tables, campfire rings, toilets are available. Hot showers and laundromat available at nearby Lake Alpine Resort. No electricity or hook-ups. Pets are welcome. Firewood, camping and fishing supplies, food, and apparel is available in the general store at Lake Alpine Lodge.
Natural Features
West Shore Campground sits at an elevation of 7,400 feet on the north end of Lake Alpine within the Stanislaus National Forest. The forest lies between Lake Tahoe and Yosemite and boasts gorgeous views. Squirrels, chipmunks, deer, marmots, coyotes, bears, eagles, and many different birds make this area their home.
Nearby Attractions
A restaurant, bar, general store, and boat rentals can be found at nearby Lake Alpine Lodge. The immediate area is suited for forest and wilderness recreation. A short car ride away is Big Trees State Park, Grover Hot Springs, Mercer Caverns, Mountain Adventure Seminars, and the wine country of Calaveras County.
What the agency tells you
This high alpine campground is very old, and was not designed or built with modern RVs in mind. It contains narrow roads, tight turns, and many, many inconvenient boulders and trees. RVs are allowed in every site if they fit, but this campground is a far cry from an RV park. The only surefire way to know if you can comfortably fit your RV in a specific site is to take an exploratory trip to scout it out for yourself.
Site driveways are asphalt paved and may not be level. There is no guarantee of sites having level driveways. Please bring ample leveling equipment for RVs and trailers. Driveway lengths are estimates and not guaranteed.
Campsites must be occupied during the dates of reservation. Guests who do not arrive by 2PM on the day following their scheduled date of arrival will be considered a No-Show and their reservation will automatically be cancelled.
Everything else this campground posts · 8
Dogs must remain on leash and under control at all times. Dogs may not be left in camp unattended, and all leads must be 6 feet or less in length. USFS guidelines allow for a maximum of two dogs per campsite.
Generator use is limited to 2 hours per day, in between the hours of 8 am and 8 pm.
On-site payment is cash only. Checks are not accepted.
This is bear country-Be bear aware! Keep all food out of sight in containers or inside a locked vehicle. Remove all food from the area after eating.
No electric, water or sewer hookups at this facility. Drinking water is provided through spigots.
All equipment must fit on the site pad. Vehicles park in developed areas only.
No extra vehicles are allowed. Extra vehicle parking is available along Highway 4 and campground entrance roads.
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
- 25
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 55 ft
- Accessible sites
- 1
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Yes, the record doesn't say what kind
- “Picnic tables, campfire rings, toilets are available.”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- DRINKING WATER (PEAK SEASON) on 25 of 25 campsite records
- Boat ramp
- Yes
- Store
- Nearby
- Firewood
- Mentioned
- Stay limit
- 14 nights
- recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Around the campground
- On the water
- Hot springs, Lake
- Night sky · 479th darkest of 1,201 in CA
- Bortle 3
- Fall color · reported 12 days ago, 32 km away
- Peak color
No reading yet, book on recreation.gov
recreation.gov lists 24 of the 25 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
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rate for this season, $32 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 Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
25 sites · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 24 mapped sitesAll 25 sites
Toilet distances are OpenStreetMap’s, measured for 25 of the 25 sites listed. A site with no reading is unknown, never far.
The price is derived by CAMPANAC, not published per site: the per-night rate this campground publishes for each site’s own site type. 24 of the 25 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| A | 1 | standard nonelectric | 26 ft | 71 ft | 893 ft | 256 ft | $32 | |
| A | 10 | standard nonelectric | 46 ft | 77 ft | 300 ft | 290 ft | $32 | |
| A | 11 | standard nonelectric | 32 ft | 77 ft | 234 ft | 216 ft | $32 | |
| A | 12 | standard nonelectric | 48 ft | 86 ft | 162 ft | 225 ft | $32 | |
| A | 13 | standard nonelectric | 37 ft | 84 ft | 181 ft | 404 ft | $32 | |
| A | 14 | standard nonelectric | 32 ft | 65 ft | 220 ft | 470 ft | $32 | |
| A | 15 | standard nonelectric | 38 ft | 61 ft | 259 ft | 417 ft | $32 | |
| A | 16 | standard nonelectric | 36 ft | 61 ft | 315 ft | 441 ft | $32 | |
| A | 17 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 60 ft | 379 ft | 382 ft | $32 | |
| A | 18 | standard nonelectric | 37 ft | 58 ft | 436 ft | 322 ft | $32 | |
| A | 19 | standard nonelectric | 22 ft | 58 ft | 436 ft | 316 ft | $32 | |
| A | 2 | standard nonelectric | 55 ft | 71 ft | 914 ft | 224 ft | $32 | |
| A | 20 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 49 ft | 493 ft | 260 ft | $32 | |
| A | 21 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 49 ft | 528 ft | 223 ft | $32 | |
| A | 22 | standard nonelectric | 31 ft | 58 ft | 556 ft | 203 ft | $32 | |
| A | 23 | standard nonelectric | 31 ft | 75 ft | 627 ft | 153 ft | $32 | |
| A | 24 | standard nonelectric | 26 ft | 48 ft | 710 ft | 66 ft | $32 | |
| A | 25 | standard nonelectric | 24 ft | 48 ft | 750 ft | 82 ft | $32 | |
| A | 3 | standard nonelectric | 48 ft | yes | 75 ft | 816 ft | 138 ft | $32 |
| A | 4 | standard nonelectric | 38 ft | 92 ft | 852 ft | 109 ft | $32 | |
| A | 5 | type not stated | 39 ft | 729 ft | 99 ft | |||
| A | 6 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 66 ft | 650 ft | 160 ft | $32 | |
| A | 7 | standard nonelectric | 41 ft | 66 ft | 584 ft | 214 ft | $32 | |
| A | 8 | standard nonelectric | 33 ft | 75 ft | 509 ft | 284 ft | $32 | |
| A | 9 | standard nonelectric | 48 ft | 105 ft | 405 ft | 384 ft | $32 |
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the phone number
Where it is
(Lake Alpine) BackpackersStanislaus National Forest · 0.3 mi
(Lake Alpine) Silver Tip CampgroundStanislaus National Forest · 0.6 mi
(Lake Alpine) Lodgepole CampgroundStanislaus National Forest · 0.9 mi
(Lake Alpine) Pine MartenStanislaus National Forest · 1.1 miBackpacker's Walk-In CampgroundStanislaus National Forest · 1.1 mi
(Lake Alpine) Silver Valley CampgroundStanislaus National Forest · 1.3 miThe weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Bear Valley, CA
Typical weather
Typical October night 36°F, day 55°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical December night 23°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
(Lake Alpine) West Shore is in California’s 3rd congressional district. Its representative, Kevin Kiley (I), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →