Hat Creek Resort & RV Park

This place is located ideally for the north parts of Lassen. You are close to the official northwest entrance and you are a reasonably short drive from the northeast stuff like the cinder cone hike.

I read some reviews on another site denigrating the staff. We had several reasons to call on them while here and they were awesome. Friendly, professional, and pleasant staff is nothing to sneeze at!

The park layout is confusing since it is all one flat open space dotted by trees, so be careful not to drive through a campsite when you think you are on the road through the campground. The staff is helpful in directing you in this regard if you let them.

That said, we had to leave a day early because the whole campground lost power. They said they’d refund us that day “no problem” but they never did. So I have learned to get things in writing rather than trusting the words at the front desk.

Speaking of sneezing, this place is dusty. Very dusty. Would love to see them place gravel and rocks around the site to keep the dust down.

The weekends can get crowded. Lots of folks come here to fish. If you aren’t an angler you may feel a bit like a fish out of water....

Verizon coverage was poor. One bar, useful for slow text messaging and not much more. But a booster turned that into three bars which made it possible to do email and social media....but forget about streaming video! ATT has no coverage at all.

There is no WiFi and while there are many full hookup sites, the cable tv does not work.

Finding the entrance to this joint ain't easy if you are northbound on highway 44. Really not very well marked at all and will require basically a u-turn in a tight space to be executed to enter. Much easier entering from southbound direction. Hat Creek RV Resort is really a big dusty area with no definition between sites and when full you could literally touch your neighbors rig, if you were so inclined. The 'resort' is very run down, with lots of wiring clearly held together Macgyver style. The location is good for accessing the northern section (Butte Lake, Cinder Cone) of the park and for getting to areas like the Caribou Wilderness section of the Lassen National Forest. And if you are into fishing, we don't partake being vegetarians, it is definitely a hot spot.

Strange little park, but we like it. Sites are scattered through a bunch of big trees right on the creek. Can be a little tricky to navigate towing, but we went slow and it was no issue. I read a review about the road construction before we came so that wasn't a surprise. I suspect the construction will be complete soon. I was surprised, however, that they start work at 6am! I'm up at that time anyway so it didn't bother me, but could see this being annoying for some.

MY MAIN REASON for writing this review is this park was rated elsewhere to have good Verizon cell service. Right as we pulled in I noticed we only had 1 bar 1x, so basically no service. We work remote, so that doesn't work. Fortunately, we just bought a Weboost Reach and OTR antenna. With just the Weboost Reach we could get 2 bars 3G. Once we hooked up the OTR antenna we could get consistent 1-2bars LTE providing 7-10MB down and 1-2MB up...just enough to work.

In the future, I would check out other camps nearby first, but we would camp here again. That said, if you rely on cell service know you will require a good booster (at least for Verizon).

A lot of shade from the many trees.