Pioneer Point
2Heads up2 fires, nearest 5 mi
- Right now
- Closedrecreation.gov lists every site closed this weekend, read 16:03 UTC
- Sites
- 80In the agency’s record
- Season
- Year-roundOpen year-round
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 7 notices
In the agency’s own words
Reservations not being accepted. Pioneer Point is a high-desert campground near Lake Isabella in the Sequoia National Forest. The 11,000-acre lake is actually a reservoir, one of California's largest, and it marks the division between the Upper and Lower Kern Rivers. Keep reading
Recreation
The focal point of this year-round campground is Lake Isabella, where campers can swim, water ski, windsurf and more. The lake is known for trout fishing during the colder months, offering anglers a variety of species, including black and white crappie, bluegill, catfish and largemouth bass.
Facilities
This 73-site campground, directly across the street from Lake Isabella, is open year-round. Some sites offer sweeping lake views, and a playground in the campground offers enjoyment for children. Lake access is less than a mile from the campgrounds. The town of Lake Isabella is a 2-mile drive away.
Natural Features
The Sequoia National Forest, located at the southern end of the Sierra Nevada in central California, takes its name from the giant sequoia, the world's largest tree, which grows in more than 30 groves on the Forest's lower slopes. The Forest comprises about 1.1 million acres, and elevations range from about 1,000 to 12,000 feet, creating precipitous canyons and mountain streams with spectacular waterfalls such as Salmon Creek Falls and Grizzly Falls. Contact Info For facility specific information, please call (760) 376-1269.
Nearby Attractions
The campground provides a great base for day trips to the Trail of a Hundred Giants and numerous Sequoia groves in the Giant Sequoia National Monument. You cannot access Sequoia National Park with a day trip. The Giant Sequoia Mercantile offers a wide variety of books, maps, gifts, local art, camping supplies and other merchandise.
What the agency tells you
Temperatures can reach the 100s in the summer
Hookups are not available
Off-road vehicles are not permitted in the campground
Everything else this campground posts · 4
Click here for more info about the Sequoia National Forest
Fire restrictions may be imposed at any time due to hot, dry weather conditions, at which time campfires and charcoal fires may not be allowed. For current fire conditions or weather closures contact the Kern River Ranger District (760) 376-3781.
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.
Site length includes tow vehicle
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 80
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 30 ft
- Paved pads
- 3 of 80
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Playground
- Yes
- Stay limit
- 14 nights
- recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Around the campground
- On the water
- Waterfall, Reservoir, Lake, River, Creek
- Boating
- Fishing
- Night sky · 917th darkest of 1,201 in CA
- Bortle 4
Nothing to book until it reopensread 16:03 UTC
recreation.gov lists every site closed this weekend
Every one of the next thirty nights is in recreation.gov’s record and not one site is being offered on any of them. That’s a campground closed or not yet released for booking, not a sold-out one.
Tell me when it reopens
Watch for it to come back
One email when the agency reopens it, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.
We check the agency’s own record once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time it stops saying closed.
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.
Every line of the receipt · 8
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 · 3
Why this page can’t say why
recreation.gov lists every site at Pioneer Point closed this Friday and Saturday night. The U.S. Forest Service has published no closure notice we hold, so this page can’t say why, and it won’t fill the gap with a guess. A closed night isn’t a sold-out one: the reservations its record still carries were taken before the sites were closed.
There’s no notice to quote and no reason to argue with, so this page offers you the watch and the list below, and no letter.
Open within 60 miles · 4
The agency’s own word that these are open, not our reading of a season.
- French GulchSequoia National Forest · 0.6 mi · 1 site
- Auxiliary Dam CampgroundSequoia National Forest · 1.4 mi
- Old IsabellaSequoia National Forest · 1.7 mi · walk-up
- South Fork Rec CampgroundSequoia National Forest · 2.9 mi · walk-up
recreation.gov availability, read 16:03 UTC · rules read Sep 9, 2026 · record Aug 23, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
80 sites · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 67 mapped sitesAll 80 sites
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 001 | standard nonelectric | 53 ft | 492 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 0011 | standard nonelectric | |||
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 0012 | standard nonelectric | |||
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 0013 | standard nonelectric | |||
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 0014 | standard nonelectric | |||
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 0015 | standard nonelectric | |||
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 002 | standard nonelectric | 32 ft | 545 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 003 | standard nonelectric | 89 ft | 546 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 004 | standard nonelectric | 43 ft | 657 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 005 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 638 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 006 | standard nonelectric | 36 ft | 634 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 007 | standard nonelectric | 36 ft | 617 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 008 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 636 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 009 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 591 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 010 | standard nonelectric | 32 ft | 590 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 011 | standard nonelectric | 29 ft | 607 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 012 | standard nonelectric | 52 ft | 616 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 013 | standard nonelectric | 114 ft | 647 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 014 | standard nonelectric | 36 ft | 727 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 015 | standard nonelectric | 63 ft | 739 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 016 | standard nonelectric | 56 ft | 723 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 017 | standard nonelectric | 50 ft | 687 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 018 | standard nonelectric | 50 ft | 643 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 019 | standard nonelectric | 51 ft | 593 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 020 | standard nonelectric | 114 ft | 534 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 021 | standard nonelectric | 77 ft | 516 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 022 | standard nonelectric | 90 ft | 388 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 023 | standard nonelectric | 90 ft | 321 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 024 | standard nonelectric | 92 ft | 424 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 025 | standard nonelectric | 76 ft | 407 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 026 | standard nonelectric | 166 ft | 324 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 027 | standard nonelectric | 98 ft | 426 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 028 | standard nonelectric | 93 ft | 440 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 029 | standard nonelectric | 71 ft | 468 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 030 | standard nonelectric | 71 ft | 402 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 031 | standard nonelectric | 68 ft | 353 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 032 | standard nonelectric | 68 ft | 363 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 033 | standard nonelectric | |||
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 034 | standard nonelectric | 76 ft | 482 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 035 | standard nonelectric | 77 ft | 553 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 036 | standard nonelectric | 90 ft | 608 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 037 | standard nonelectric | 36 ft | 710 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 038 | standard nonelectric | 109 ft | 682 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 039 | standard nonelectric | 54 ft | 538 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 040 | standard nonelectric | 29 ft | 555 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 041 | standard nonelectric | 29 ft | 582 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 042 | standard nonelectric | 29 ft | 592 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 043 | standard nonelectric | 32 ft | 602 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 044 | standard nonelectric | 32 ft | 599 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 045 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 610 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 046 | standard nonelectric | 23 ft | 608 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 047 | standard nonelectric | 32 ft | 568 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 048 | standard nonelectric | 32 ft | 570 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 049 | standard nonelectric | 74 ft | 490 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 050 | standard nonelectric | 43 ft | 615 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 051 | standard nonelectric | 36 ft | 627 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 052 | standard nonelectric | 65 ft | 638 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 053 | standard nonelectric | 59 ft | 584 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 054 | standard nonelectric | 49 ft | 552 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 055 | standard nonelectric | 80 ft | 476 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 056 | standard nonelectric | 49 ft | 552 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 057 | standard nonelectric | 16 ft | 637 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 058 | standard nonelectric | 16 ft | 648 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 059 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 644 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 060 | standard nonelectric | 103 ft | 666 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 061 | standard nonelectric | 10 ft | 702 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 062 | standard nonelectric | 36 ft | 662 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 063 | standard nonelectric | 90 ft | 534 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 064 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 705 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 065 | standard nonelectric | 46 ft | 700 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 066 | standard nonelectric | 10 ft | 698 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 067 | standard nonelectric | 49 ft | 649 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 068 | standard nonelectric | 54 ft | 655 ft | |
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 069 | standard nonelectric | |||
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 070 | standard nonelectric | |||
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 071 | standard nonelectric | |||
| AREA PIONEER POINT | 072 | standard nonelectric | |||
| AREA PIONEER POINT | FS1 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | ||
| AREA PIONEER POINT | FS1NNN | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | ||
| AREA PIONEER POINT | FS1NNN (N) | standard nonelectric | 30 ft |
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 80 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
French GulchSequoia National Forest · 0.6 miAuxiliary Dam CampgroundSequoia National Forest · 1.4 mi
Hungry GulchSequoia National Forest · 1.7 mi
Old IsabellaSequoia National Forest · 1.7 mi
Boulder GulchSequoia National Forest · 1.7 miFrom Bakersfield, California, take Highway 178 east to the town of Lake Isabella. From Lake Isabella take 155 north about 1.5 miles to Pioneer Point Campground.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Lake Isabella, CA
Typical weather
Typical October night 46°F, day 81°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical December night 31°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
Pioneer Point is in California’s 20th congressional district. Its representative, Vince Fong (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →