Yosemite National Park to drop day-use reservations Nov. 1
Limits can end due to reduced number of visitors in fall and the winter
Four months after Yosemite National Park limited the number of people who can visit due to concerns over the spread of coronavirus, park officials on Sept. 29 announced they are fully reopening the gates.
Starting Nov. 1, the park will drop its system requiring day-use visitors to make reservations ahead of time to drive into the park. That system, put in place June 11, kept the number of visitors to no more than 50% of normal to encourage social distancing.
But every fall and winter, the number of visitors to the famed Sierra Nevada park drops off, so the reservation system is no longer needed, said Jamie Richards, a Yosemite spokeswoman.
“Based on the recommendation of our local and federal public health officials, conditions have improved so we are able to maintain safe conditions while removing the day use reservation system,” Richards said.
Last year, in June, 515,537 people visited Yosemite. By November, that number had fallen by more than half, to 239,094. It dropped sharply again to 155,192 in December.
Over the last four months, no outbreaks of COVID-19 have been linked to Yosemite.
Mariposa County, where much of the park lies, has only had 74 of California’s 807,000 COVID-19 cases, and two of its 15,640 deaths.
Until Nov. 1, day use res
ervations will still need to be made at recreation.gov to visit the park in October for people who do not have overnight reservations at campsites or hotels.
It’s unclear whether the park plans to bring back the day-use reservation system next summer when the number of visitors typically increases significantly.
“We’re going to be evaluating the system, and we’re going to continue to evaluate what conditions look
like,” Richards said. “We’re going to be making decisions based on the health and safety of park visitors and park employees.”
Yosemite, which receives more than 4 million visitors a year in normal times, closed in March due to the coronavirus outbreak. It reopened three months later with the day-use reservation rule, and only one major campground in Yosemite Valley reopened.
There are now three
campgrounds open in the valley, but the news that the park will be fully opened was cheered by local county officials, whose economy depends on tourism.
“I obviously support them. Our health officer supports them,” said Mariposa County Supervisor Kevin Cann. “I’d like them to keep the option of dropping it even sooner.”
Cann noted that Mariposa County is one of only three of California’s 58 counties listed in the yellow tier of COVID severity — the least severe — by the state health department. The other two are Alpine and Modoc counties, both of which are even more rural than Mariposa.
“We’ve done a great job,” Cann said. “We’ve proven that people can come and stay in Mariposa County and Yosemite. The park has done a tremendous job in making it a safe place to be. People are desperate to be able to get outside.”
One leading Bay Area coronavirus expert said it’s probably OK to drop the reservation system, but the park should reinstate it if they have a significant outbreak.
“If they think that they are going to be able to maintain the same density of visitors, that’s fine,” said Dr. George Rutherford, an epidemiologist at UC San Francisco. “Stay away from the bears.”