Sandy Beach

Tucked just off the freeway by jarbo Gap with a little sandy beach and river. Be careful on the way down, the walkway is uneven and dangerous

Now open after construction closed for many months. 3 stars because no restroom facility. Edges of parking recently mowed and short path to sandy beach on Feather River. Great swimming spot. Also remember area is posted with warnings regarding rattlesnakes, so be careful.

"Sandy Beach", naw, it's called Hunter's because Old Man Hunter (a prospector) dug the road and flat area out of the hillside by hand with a pick and wheelbarrow. He built a house, barn, garage and several outbuildings that were taken down by the Federal Forest Service years after he died. They then built a Fire Station that was manned for four or five years. For years, it was the best beach in the river with a great hole for swimming and five people on the beach was a crowd. Now it's loaded with drunk college students with no sense of history or respect for the location. They leave their trash, beer cans and bottles and human waste all over the place. It made me incredibly sad to see the wonderful beach of my childhood to be transformed into a pit of unfettered debauchery and filth

I grew up in one of the housing units at the caltrans station up the road from the place. It's great when the college kids aren't there, it's even actually pretty good even when they're there, but when they leave let's just say i wouldn't let my dog take a dump there. (I hereby state my intention is not to inspire any acts of trespassing, merely to inform folks of a pretty view) You can sneak into the caltrans yard if you follow the colvert that feeds into the river and there's a short trail that wraps around the station and leads to a (supposedly) indian family cemetery that's pretty scenic. There's also a lot of graffiti in the colvert as it goes under the highway and some of it's quite superb. Visit in the autumn or near the beginning of spring before the college kids start showing up a

I grew up swimming at this place, my family used to live at the Caltrans station near here. However, I knew the beach as Hunter's, because there was an old man named Hunter who used to live down there. It's been years since I've been down there, at this point.