Yosemite reservations are coming back to enter national park. Here’s what to know
Day-use reservations will again be needed to enter Yosemite National Park this summer, park staff announced Thursday morning.
Yosemite will sell a limited number of ticketed entry passes via recreation.gov – required in addition to normal park entrance fees – to reduce visitation due to COVID-19.
The day-use reservation passes will go on sale at 8 a.m. April 21 for dates starting May 21. The reservation system will be in effect through Sept. 30 “or until local health conditions improve.” Online day-use passes via recreation.gov were $2.
They aren’t needed for visitors with an overnight reservation within the park boundary – including private communities inside Yosemite – a bus or commercial tour ticket in, or a wilderness or Half Dome permit. They also aren’t needed for those who enter on foot, bicycle or horseback.
This summer, Hetchy Hetchy day-use visitors also won’t need a separate day-use reservation to enter the park, but access will be limited there once parking fills.
Park staff said an additional 950 to 1,850 more day-use passes should be issued each week compared to 2020. About 11,000 visitors a day were allowed into Yosemite last summer, park officials said.
The decision to implement the reservation system again was made after conducting a “rigorous risk assessment” with public health officials, said Yosemite Superintendent Cicely Muldoon during Thursday’s virtual quarterly meeting of Yosemite Gateway Partners.
How to get an online reservation
Last summer, about 80% of reservations to enter the park were available at the start of each month, with the remaining 20% available two days prior to a visit.
That’s no longer the case. This year, Yosemite officials said these are the first days visitors will be able to make a reservation to enter:
- April 21 (for arrivals between May 21 and June 30)
- April 28 (for arrivals between July 1 and July 31)
- May 5 (for arrivals between Aug. 1 and Aug. 31)
- May 12 (for arrivals between Sept. 1 and Sept. 30)
- May 14 to Sept. 23 (for arrivals seven days in advance)
“Reservations will go extremely quickly,” Yosemite officials said, “be sure to have an account (via recreation.gov), be logged in, and ready to get a reservation promptly at 8 a.m. Pacific time. If you have an annual or lifetime pass, be sure to specify that once your reservation is in the shopping cart.”
Yosemite spokesperson Jamie Richards said the decision to no longer have some passes available 48 hours in advance like last year was based on public feedback to help visitors better plan summer trips to Yosemite.
What else will be different in Yosemite this summer?
The day-use reservations will be valid for three days in the park instead of the normal seven days.
Officials said that for those with overnight reservations, “the permit is valid for the duration of the reservation or three days, whichever is longer.”
Entrance will go back to being valid for seven days when online reservations are no longer needed, expected at the end of September.
Muldoon said more passes will be available this summer from Sunday through Wednesday.
“We think this will keep us safe and give more people a chance to visit Yosemite,” Muldoon said.
Online reservations haven’t been needed to enter Yosemite since February, when the park reinstated the system temporarily – in part to reduce day visitors who come to see the park’s popular “firefall” phenomenon in February.
Muldoon prefaced the summer reservation news during Thursday’s meeting by saying visitation to Yosemite is already high this year. As an example, she said one visitor was recently stuck in Yosemite Valley traffic for five hours.
“This should be a trip of a lifetime,” Muldoon said. “It should be about the granite, not the gridlock.”
This gridlock also compromises emergency services in the park, she said.
But park shuttles will again not operate in the summer of 2021, park officials also announced Thursday, which can lead to more visitors driving. Yosemite Area Regional Transportation (YARTS) buses into the park are still running.
More Yosemite camping and lodging will be available this summer, also, Muldoon said.
There will be 1,007 open Yosemite rooms this summer under the least-restrictive COVID-19 tier compared to 613 open last summer. Lodging that will be open this summer includes The Ahwahnee, Yosemite Valley Lodge, Curry Village, Housekeeping Camp, “and possibly” the Wawona Hotel, which has been closed for repairs.
There will be 585 campsites open this summer compared to 247 last summer. Open campgrounds include Upper Pines, Lower Pines, North Pines, Camp 4, Wawona, Bridalveil Creek and Tuolumne Meadows.
Walk-in campgrounds are not opening this summer. High Sierra Camps will also not open this year.
People will be allowed to drive through Yosemite to reach a destination on the other side of the park without a reservation.
COVID-19 cases around Yosemite and California
Coronavirus cases remain high in nearby central San Joaquin Valley counties but have been dropping.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced earlier this week that California will fully reopen its economy June 15 as long as it has enough COVID-19 vaccines and hospitalizations are low.
Mariposa County Health Officer Eric Sergienko said he’s “fairly optimistic” that the state will be able to meet that date, but said one challenge to making that happen is the UK variant of COVID-19. Sergienko said this strain of the virus is likely to become the predominant strain in the U.S. and is about 60% more transmissible than the one currently in California. This UK strain also increases hospitalizations by about 55%, he said.
Still, models are showing a decrease in COVID-19 cases through spring and into July, but that there could be some increase in July depending on how many people have received vaccines by then, Sergienko added.
Yosemite officials haven’t shared the number of COVID-19 cases in the park, but coronavirus has been reported in Yosemite. Park staff on Thursday said there was “very low COVID transmission” among employees in Yosemite. There is now a federal mask mandate that applies to Yosemite National Park.
Much of the park sits in rural Mariposa County, which is listed in the orange tier under California’s blueprint for reopening, where some indoor business operations are open with modifications.
Vehicles in Yosemite Valley and park
Yosemite officials said there was an average of 3,148 vehicles a day in Yosemite Valley when the reservation system was implemented last year – close to the park’s goal of 3,170 a day.
One target is to increase that to 5,706 vehicles in Yosemite Valley this year under the least-restrictive tier – approximately 90% of vehicles in 2019.
In all last year, the park planned about 3,600 vehicles a day in Yosemite – approximately half of daily vehicles in the park in June 2019. That could increase to 6,480 parkwide in 2021, about 90% of vehicles in the park in 2019.
Yosemite officials said the target vehicle levels are based on COVID-19 conditions and park conditions, and that day-use permit availability is calculated to achieve these target levels.
Yosemite closed in March 2020 as part of the California lockdown and reopened June 11 with the new day-use reservation system in place for the first time. That system ended Oct. 31 but was put back in place temporarily during the month of February.
This story was originally published April 8, 2021 at 12:19 PM with the headline "Yosemite reservations are coming back to enter national park. Here’s what to know."
