Everything you need to know before visiting Burney Falls
Burney falls is an amazingly beautiful area to visit in Northern California. The park is called McArthur Burney Falls Memorial State Park. The waterfall itself is larger than you might expect, or at least it was larger than I expected!
It gushes over 100 million gallons of water per day. Interestingly, the water comes mostly from underwater aqueducts filled with mountain snow top run off.
Here are some things to know if you plan on visiting:
Come early! The parking lots may fill up quickly and you may have to wait in a line to get in. When I visited, the upper lots were full by nine and there was quite a long line to get in! If the parking fills up, the rangers may unfortunately need to refuse entry to those in line. I got in at 8 and was able to park at the visitor center! Score! (note: I visited on July 4th so there may have been more crowds than usual)
If you plan on camping, there is camping in the park for $35 / night. The camp spots look really great with lots of space, at least three vehicles were able to park at each. There is a grill and picnic table at each site and bathrooms and coin operated showers at the grounds. I camped in my car for free on BLM land which is about a 20 minute drive from the park. There are also a lot of other campgrounds you can check out that are right outside of the park. Many of these take reservations along with also having some first come first serve spots. Check out Northshore and Dusty Campgrounds (operated by PG&E Recreation)
In the park, the bathrooms have running water and are relatively clean. There are bathrooms at the general store, at the campsite and at the lake. You can also grab food, snacks, postcards and ice cream at the general store!
There is wifi at the visitor center but there is not much signal elsewhere! The visitor center was home base for me because it had wifi along with outlets. Since I was car camping and my car is not fully set up yet, the outlets were super helpful for charging phones and battery packs and the wifi was helpful for finding the next place I planned on staying
The park accepts the California Library Card Parks Pass (you can check out at your local California Library) but not Nationals Parks Pass!
Best things to do:
Burney falls is not a massive park. I would say there are really two main attractions:
The Falls! Obviously if you are visiting, you want to check out the falls! From the visitor enter, there is a view point less than 100 feet away. You can then do a full falls loop that is about 1.2 miles. The loop brings you to the bottom of the falls and over two of the bridges (Rainbow bridge and Fisherman’s bridge)
Spend some time at the lake! About a mile away from the visitor center is the lake area. You can bring a boat (we saw a lot of people who brought actual boats) or you can rent a kayak / canoe and paddle around. We paddled for an hour on the canoe. From where we rented, there was not too much of the lake to explore, so 1 hour was the perfect amount of time. Across from where you can rent boats, there is a small beach that is open for swimming. This was super crowded. I did not go in, but I would assume, based on the ages of those swimming, that it was quite shallow
While you are exploring the area, make sure to read the signs so that you can visit the visitor center and get a free patch! There are ~14 questions in your map newspaper that you are handed when you enter and if you answer everything correctly, the patch is yours! Each year the questions and design are different
How long to spend:
I don’t think you need more than a day to explore the area. It is really beautiful, but it is also quite small. With only a day, I still spent a good amount of time at the picnic areas hammocking, reading and cooking food. There is a lot of great picnic areas with tables, grills, water and trees! Even with the full parking lot, I had no issue taking over a small section
Let me know if you get to visit Burney falls! What was your favorite thing? Did I forget anything?
