About TrailheadParking.com

What this site is

TrailheadParking.com does one thing: it tells you what parking is actually like at mountain trailheads — how many cars fit, when the lot fills, what pass you need, what enforcement looks like, and what the realistic plan B is. It grew out of a pattern we kept seeing while building our area guides: the number-one thing that ruins a mountain day isn't the trail, it's arriving at 10am to a full lot with no plan.

Coverage spans four Southern California ranges — the San Bernardinos (Lake Arrowhead–Crestline–Running Springs, Big Bear, Forest Falls), the San Gabriels (Chantry Flat, Switzer Falls, East Fork, Icehouse Canyon), the San Jacintos (Idyllwild) and San Diego County (Cedar Creek Falls, Three Sisters Falls, Mt. Woodson, Torrey Pines) — plus Zion, Bryce Canyon and Arches, where shuttles, permit lotteries and reservation systems replace the usual question of lot size. We go where the parking question is genuinely confusing and the official answer is genuinely findable — the Park Service publishes lot-by-lot capacities that most forests simply don't.

How facts get verified

Every fee, lot description, and access rule is checked against the official source — the Forest Service, the county, the operator — at the time the page is written, and every page carries a facts last verified date at the bottom. Mountain rules change seasonally, so perishable facts get re-checked on a recurring pass. When we get something wrong, we fix the page rather than defend it.

No business pays to appear here and no placement is sponsored. Where something is genuinely uncertain — like the informal pullouts at the Arrowhead Pinnacles — the page says so plainly instead of faking precision.

The family of sites

This site comes from the same maker as BigBearMap.com and LakeArrowheadMap.com — practical, verification-first guides to the San Bernardino mountain communities. The trailhead pages here link to those guides for the trails themselves; this site stays focused on the lot.