Manker Campground

Some camp sites are not leveled. Bring a rake for the rocks!! The campsites are equipped with fire pit, bbq stand, Picnic benches, and restrooms with toilet paper. The forest ranger (grounds keeper) is very helpful. Make sure you ask him all your questions about the campsite, the area, or anything else. There has been a lot of incidents of people saving spaces but because it’s first come first serve the ranger will be on top of you if it’s looks like your saving a spot. If you have two cars parking on one campsite write the second one on the slip that gets hung on your campsite pole, with the first car. We camped on May 31 -July 1. The ranger and the very nice campers informed us about the animals that have been around the campsites. Specifically the three bears. BE BEAR AWARE!!!! Mother bear and cub really liked being around our camp site (15,16). They have been known to open car doors if they are unlocked, brake the windows if they are cracked open, and the cub tries to climb your car. Keep a light on at your camp site. It could help to play some music loud enough to hear and not disturbing other campers. I had to shew the cub away from us by saying “ hey bear, hey bear” or anything would do. Higher pitch voices are best for getting bears away from you (women will be the saviors). Watch out a lot of spiky caterpillars. The road going up to the camp 5 minutes before is very sharp in turns! Keep to your lane . Other than that experience was amazing. There are trails, water falls, rivers, and a lot of people that go camping there have been frequent visitors. You are allowed to use the dead lang branches that have fallen at the other side of the hill I front of camp 16.

We visited this campground over last weekend Oct12/13. There is no option to book the campsite through online portals. All campsites are first come first serve basis. We reached the campground around 11.30a.m on Saturday morning. There were couple of unoccupied sites. One thing to note in these campsites is that the sites are not flat. So, checkout all sites for flatness to setup your tent before finalizing on one. The restrooms are equipped with paper towels, pit-hole toilets. The campsite is equipped with grill, fire-pit, picnic table, and water. One advantage with these campsites is that there is 11.5mi hiking trail just adjacent to it. We did hike a total of 4mi at our own pace. I plan to do 11.5mi hike in our next camping. We were not allowed to light the campfire in the night due to “high fire alert - Santa Ana winds”. So, we spend time inside tent playing Uno. Overall, we had wonderful experience camping here.

Great place for some free snow play. Was really crowded January 1st 2020. Took about 2 hours to get up the hill (same for going down at the end of the day but made for great sunset pictures) in dead stop traffic. And it was pretty hard to find a spot to park. Bathroom line was about a 30 minute wait. Lots of slopes for sledding with kids and some pretty steep ones for teens and adults. Overall had a fun snow day. *Please remember to always "Leave No Trace". Pack in what you pack out. Help keep our parks clean for others to enjoy 🌲

I love this campground, it’s secluded from town and if you want to go explore baldy you can stay the night, very inexpensive we stayed here for two nights and we had the chance to hike to the waterfall nearby. The family loved it. Perfect in the summer and early fall, avoid in winter it can get in the lows at night time unless you into winter camping.

Great place to get a snow experience. Make sure you visit the place before chain restrictions are ON. The camping ground has benches and restroom facilities. We visited on mid January. The place had nice snow and we managed to experience a snow shower as well.