Bar 717 Ranch

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Bar 717 Ranch

At the Bar 717 Ranch, activities are wholesome, practical, challenging and rewarding, as well as bei

The Bar 717 Ranch, Camp Trinity offers children ages 8-16 an opportunity to spend the summer on a beautiful mountain ranch. Through Ranch activities, the camp program emphasizes taking responsibility for oneself and others in a non-competitive, supportive environment. Campers may choose freely from activities including horseback riding, backpacking, gardening, animal care, river swimming, arts and crafts, photography, music, drama, archery blacksmithing, ceramics and much more.

09/02/2026

A First Session recap!

After Alumni Weekend each year, we launch straight into staff training: lifeguarding & first aid certifications, plus an orientation week where staff learn about the ranch, our program, & their roles here.

By the time First Session arrives, the excitement and joy of being back at camp is palpable across campers and staff, and it gives First Session a wonderful start-of-summer energy. Programs were in full swing, from slack lining to horseback riding to ceramics, and campers came to announcements each day with stories of crawdad sightings, shooting stars, & card games before bed.

First Session brought our inaugural Alps backpacking trips, camp dances, and Untalent Show, and we also hosted our first festival of the summer: a chance for international staff to share favorite food, games, and traditions from their home countries. But some of the most indelible memories from First Session were not big events, but rather the everyday moments of settling back into summer at the ranch: the coziness of the first campfire up on Friendship Hill, watching campers bond over stacking hay in the barn, and seeing the craft shops on the Avenue come to life with everyone’s creativity.

Falling during the last two weeks of June, First Session is the true start of summer: warm weather perfect for a dip at the swim hole, and some of the longest days of the year. There’s no better way to celebrate the season than by welcoming our first group of campers to the ranch each year! First Session, thank you once again for all the joy and energy you brought to the Bar 717. We can’t wait to see you again in 2027 🌻

09/01/2026

The Bar 717 is a working ranch year-round, and during these last few post-camp weeks as ranch projects have taken center stage, we’ve done some reflecting on what that means. Ranching is inherently seasonal: whether you’re planting rows of tomatoes, constructing a new building, burning brush, or waiting for calves to be born, everything has its own place in the course of the year. The Bar 717 is unique in the sense that camp life and ranch life have grown together — welcoming campers to the ranch every summer is as natural to life here as the arrival of warmer days in the spring. And that’s exactly how we want it to be! We want campers to feel like they’re not only an expected part of life here, but an important part of it, integral to the ongoing care and creation of this place.

Involving campers in daily ranch life is a huge pillar of the Camp Trinity program, and though many larger projects take place before or after camp out of necessity, nothing has made a bigger mark on this place than the many decades of campers that have joined us during the summer. From painting new signs to clearing new trails to constructing new buildings, the hard work that our campers contribute is visible everywhere.

The Bar 717 experiences many of the same rhythms as other ranches across the country; unlike many others, however, our summer season also brings us the welcome presence of campers who love it here as much as we do. It’s the hub of our year, and we can’t imagine ranch life without it.

08/28/2026

Another week has come and gone — time continues to fly by, even after Camp has ended. We’ve been hard at work this week on ranch projects and ranch improvements: pruning apple trees, collecting kayaks from the river for winter storage, deep cleaning our program areas, and canning pears and plum jam. We also tore down our old garden greenhouse to make way for new planting space, and completed demolition and cleanup for one of our older platforms in need of rebuilding. With so many hands on deck to help this year, it’s been an incredibly productive post-season. Swipe to the last slide for a bird’s eye view of Main Camp from the apple-pruning bucket truck 🍎

We’re looking forward to a quiet weekend on the ranch: enjoying the late summer sunshine, spending some time at the river, and stargazing on clear nights (the Milky Way has been particularly beautiful the last few evenings).

See you next week!

08/26/2026

The bulk of our summer season may be over, but we’re not quite ready to let it go yet. There’s still so many photos and favorite moments to share, and so much to be said about the unique experience of each new week (or two weeks) on the ranch. Starting with Alumni Weekend and going all the way through Family Camp, we’re going to dive back into the summer, recapping our 2026 season with the detail it deserves and (hopefully!) capturing the feeling of being at the ranch during different times of the year, from special events to festivals to seasonal changes in the mountains. For those of you who joined us this summer, we hope you enjoy this trip down recent memory lane; and for those of you who have yet to join us, we hope you come away feeling like you know us and our programs a bit better.

Swipe through to read more! →

Let’s begin: Alumni Weekend 🌿 This is the very first event of the summer, landing right at the end of May. With the help of our pre-season counselor crew — who’ve just spent the previous few weeks readying the ranch for visitors, organizing program areas, moving hay for animals, and harvesting spring fruit — we host a small group of Camp Trinity alumni of all ages for a peaceful weekend in the mountains. Programming is truly free-choice: we share meals together and gather for announcements or for evening events such as a camp dance, but otherwise we make space for alumni to just enjoy the ranch and each other’s company. Some play music, some tackle a Gates Mountain hike, some work on personal craft projects, some head to silk screening or to help with ranch projects, and some simply relax.

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Let’s begin: Alumni Weekend 🌿 This is the very first event of the summer, landing right at the end of May. With the help of our pre-season counselor crew — who’ve just spent the previous few weeks readying the ranch for visitors, organizing program areas, moving hay for animals, and harvesting spring fruit — we host a small group of Camp Trinity alumni of all ages for a peaceful weekend in the mountains. Programming is truly free-choice: we share meals together and gather for announcements or for evening events such as a camp dance, but otherwise we ma

08/24/2026

Harvest season continues!

A few members of our post-season crew spent their afternoon picking pears from the trees right beside our front gate; once they ripen, they’ll be canned to preserve them for the winter 🍐

08/22/2026

We are nearly a full week into our post-season, and although we’re still missing the hustle and bustle of having all our campers at the ranch, we’ve been staying busy with plenty of projects.

Our post-season crew has been hard at work removing old fences to make a new area of the ranch safe for our livestock, and we’ve also spent time tidying up our barn, moving our horses across the river for some well-earned time off, and transitioning our kitchen into fall harvest mode. This month is peak harvest time for both our garden and our fruit trees, so over the next few weeks we’ll be busy picking and preserving veggies, as well as making plum jam and canning pears.

Thanks to our post-season team for all your amazing energy this week!

08/20/2026

An Alps season so good it deserved its own recap 🏔️

Each session, we send two extended backpacking trips out into the nearby Trinity Alps; this year, we had so much interest that we sent three groups during Third Session! Each group spends three nights hiking through different areas of the Alps, exploring crisp alpine lakes, lush meadows, and stunning mountaintop views. Campers learn to carry and cook their own meals outdoors, filter their water, and sleep under the stars each night. It’s also an incredible bonding experience for campers, who often return with new friendships that last throughout the rest of their time at the ranch and beyond.

Thanks to all our intrepid backpackers (and amazing backpacking counselors) for joining us this summer!

08/18/2026

The hardest part of this summer was, of course, saying goodbye to all our campers. The second hardest part? Choosing just twenty photos to sum it up.

It’s hard to believe that our 2026 camp season is over — it feels like we were just kicking things off with Alumni Weekend and staff Orientation Week, and now here we are already moving into our post-season. It’s truly been an incredible few months of fun, growth, new friendships, new skills, and soaking in the beauty of the ranch. We danced and sang together, shared countless meals, gathered around twilight campfires, hiked and backpacked, swam in cool mountain streams, stacked hay, fed animals, harvested produce in the garden, and so much more. Thank you to all our campers, alumni, family, and friends who joined us this year at Camp Trinity on the Bar 717 Ranch; it was truly a joy to spend time with you.

As always, life on the ranch doesn’t stop when camp does. We have a great post-season crew to help us with important projects as we head towards fall and winter, and we’re looking forward to a quieter (but still busy) season of ranch chores, harvesting fruit and produce, canning and pickling, and continuing to look after the animals we share the ranch with.

Stay tuned for more updates as we move into our post-season, as well as important information about our 2027 calendar & enrollment. We’re excited to continue sharing what we’re up to throughout our off season, and excited to continue connecting with you all here until we’re all back at the ranch next summer!

08/16/2026

Thank you for an incredible week, Family Campers!

We made the most of this final week of our summer season: a picnic dinner and dance at the Homestead, creative crafts of all kinds on the Avenue, a spectacular Untalent Show, afternoon river walks, and an exciting boat race in our water ditch. We closed out the week last night with a dance, slideshow, and campfire, and said goodbye to everyone after this morning’s final Sunday breakfast.

It’s been an amazing summer, and it’s hard to believe that it’s already over. We’re looking ahead to working with our post-season crew to prepare the ranch for the off season, and reflecting on the last few months of camp!

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08/12/2026

Family Camp is off to a great start! Everyone has been enjoying our program areas from blacksmithing to silkscreening, as well as afternoon swims and an overnight trip to Emily’s. We’ve harvested tomatoes and basil from the garden to make bruschetta, played on the swing at the top of Friendship Hill, and worked on some beautiful arts & crafts projects 🎨

Family Campers, we’re so glad you’re here!

Address

17197 Hyampom Road
Hayfork, CA
CA

Telephone

+15306285992

Website

http://bar717.com/

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