Shaw Flat Trail Camp

Shaw Flat Trail Camp is a quiet, little-used campground on a hillside flat above Pescadero Creek, about 3 miles from the Hoffman Creek Trailhead. It’s not quite as attractive as Tarwater Trail Camp, but it’s more spread out.

The sites are arranged along a dirt service road, but they’re set back 10 or 20 yards from the road and surrounded by a wall of dense huckleberry shrubs, giving them much more privacy than most backcountry campgrounds.

The sites are just clearings with no furnishings; there are no picnic tables, and there are two shared food lockers for the entire camp (except site 7, which for some reason gets its own locker). There’s one outhouse, and no water is provided. Campfires are unfortunately no longer allowed, and the fire rings have been removed.

Like most lowland redwood camps, there are a lot of mosquitoes in the summer; bring lots of picaridin.

The camp is first-come, first-served; you have to get a permit and pay the $10.00 fee at the entrance to Memorial County Park. It rarely fills up. The camp is only open in summer.

Site 5 is very open and has a bit of a view of Butano Ridge, and is the best site overall. Sites 1 and 7 are in clusters of small redwoods; site 7 is the nicer of the two since it’s bigger (it looks like a double-size site) and brighter. The other sites aren’t in the redwoods.

Site 1

Site 4