Yosemite to limit summer visitation
Day use reservation system will return from May 21 to Sept. 30 to curb crowds
With California shaking off a year of COVID-19 restrictions, one of the state’s most treasured tourist attractions won’t be throwing open its gates in a rush to re-open for all: Yosemite National Park will limit the number of visitors this summer during the peak tourist season by requiring advance reservations for people who visit the park during the day.
The park’s superintendent, Cicely Muldoon, said large crowds already have been coming to the park in recent weeks, and there are still cases of COVID-19 spreading in California and other states and countries where park visitors live.
“The basic plan is to protect human health and safety and provide as much access as we can,” Muldoon said Thursday during a meeting with government and business leaders of the communities surrounding the park.
Under the new rules, advance reservations will be required for day-use visitors who enter Yosemite from May 21 to Sept. 30. Rocky Mountain National Park and Glacier National Park are putting in place similar rules, which have been encouraged for decades by environmental groups but resisted by gateway communities whose economies depend heavily on tourism.
A similar day-use reservation system was in place last summer. It limited Yosemite’s visitation to 50% of normal. This summer the number of visitors allowed will range from 50% to 90%, depending on what levels of COVID-19 are found in Mariposa County on the park’s western edge. Currently, with Mariposa in California’s orange tier, Yosemite will allow 70% of normal summer visitation — or about 5,760 vehicles aday.
“We think these numbers will allow people to enjoy the park safely,” Muldoon said.
Reservations can be made at www.recreation. gov beginning at 8 a.m. on April 21. Each day-use reservation is valid for one vehicle for three days. Vehicles that arrive at park entrances after May 21 without reservations will not be admitted.
Visitors with reservations to stay overnight at hotels and campgrounds in the park aren’t required to make day-use reservations. Nor are people with wilderness and Half Dome permits or visitors entering the park on the YARTS bus system or commercial tours.
With more people becoming vaccinated and COVID-19 case numbers falling steadily in California, park officials decided to open more amenities this year than last — but not everything.
Due to COVID-19 concerns, park shuttle buses will not run this summer. Some but not all campgrounds in the park will be open, with 585 sites available starting July 1, compared to 247 last year.
Hotels such as the Ahwahnee and Yosemite Lodge are open, as are most restaurants, gift shops and gas stations. But indoor visitor centers, the park’s museum, theater and High Sierra camps remain closed. The Biden administration also has required all National Park visitors to wear masks indoors — and outdoors when they can’t stay more than 6 feet apart, a shift from the Trump administration, which did not mandate masks.
Tourism leaders said they would prefer not to have the reservations but feel this year’s system is better than last year’s.
“Roughly half of our entire county is employed in the tourism industry,” said Tony McDaniel, a spokesman for the Yosemite Mariposa County Tourism Bureau. “We’ve seen a lot of layoffs and closures over the past year. But there’s a lot of positivity right now with more access. It seems like this year is going to be better. We’re already seeing hotels fill up and business return.”
Unusually large crowds already are coming back. Last week, during Easter weekend, there were lines of cars up to an hour long at the park’s entrance stations, with delays of up to two hours in Yosemite Valley.
Dr. Eric Sergienko, Mariposa County’s health officer, said that some state models show that as summer travel opens up, COVID-19 cases could increase in California in July. Typically about 25% of Yosemite’s visitors come from other countries.
“As we see an increase in population mobility, we will see an uptick in cases,” Sergienko said, noting that a huge surge is not expected but variants of the virus are more contagious.
This year the park and its concession company, Aramark, plan to hire fewer summer employees than normal, which also impacts visitor services, to curb the risk of COVID-19 outbreaks in staff housing.
Yosemite received 4.6 million visitors in 2019. It closed March 20, 2020, due to the pandemic, then reopened June 11. Park officials required reservations for day-use visitors for the first time in the park’s 156year history and limited the number of campsites.
Back then, daily use was kept to 50% of normal. The park issued up to 1,700 vehicle passes each day for day use, which sold out most days, and allowed up to 1,900 more vehicles for people with overnight reservations.
Park officials lifted the requirement on Nov. 1, due to low winter visitation. But in February for four weeks, the reservation system was brought back as crowds turned up to see the “firefall,” bright sunsets reflected off the waters of Horsetail Falls.
Since March 1, however, no day-use reservations have been required. Environmentalists said Thursday they’d like to see the system become permanent.
“As was evidenced just last weekend in Yosemite, visitor experiences are too often dominated by sitting in gridlock for hours or navigating crowded, trashlittered trails,” said Mark Rose, Sierra Nevada program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association. “Visitors deserve better.”