How busy is Yosemite National Park this summer? Changes and openings announced
Yosemite National Park visitation will increase to about 90% of normal by next week with the opening of another Yosemite campground, and more accommodations soon being available at the recently-opened Wawona Hotel.
Yosemite officials made that announcement and others during a virtual Yosemite Gateway Partners meeting Thursday that included a range of summer updates for the popular park in California.
Visitors still need day-use reservations via recreation.gov to enter Yosemite through the end of September unless they have an overnight lodging or camping reservation in the park, or a wilderness, Half Dome or climbing permit.
Those visiting Hetch Hetchy, or just driving through Yosemite, don’t need a reservation to enter.
Bridalveil Creek Campground along Glacier Point Road will open July 15 at a reduced capacity. Reservations are required for all campgrounds in Yosemite this year. Yosemite campgrounds that don’t require reservations, primarily along Tioga Road, aren’t open.
Expect delays at Yosemite National Park entrance gates
“We’re seeing very long delays in lines at the entry gates,” said Kathleen Morse, Yosemite’s division chief of strategic planning and project management, during Thursday’s meeting.
“In part, because of the lack of connectivity to rapidly process the reservations. They have to all be processed by hand, and also due to the higher visitation numbers. ... In addition, there are a greater number of user types entering the park that need to be correctly categorized to get the right passes in their hands and to track that use.”
That includes those just driving through Yosemite without a reservation, who are given passes at the gates stating they have to be out of the park within a certain amount of time, usually just a few hours.
In addition, “a good many visitors still reach the gate and have no reservations and must be turned around,” Morse said. “This number can be hundreds – two to four hundred in a day.”
Morse said that’s been happening at all the park gates.
No park shuttle buses adds to Yosemite Valley traffic issues
Traffic delays in popular Yosemite Valley, which holds the park’s most famous destinations, are tied to there being no free park shuttle buses operating this year.
Yosemite officials said shuttles are unavailable because of staffing constraints, since the park and its concessionaire have to follow National Park Service rules that limit shared employee housing due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Morse said parking lots are filling “earlier and more rapidly,” especially on the east end of Yosemite Valley, which is closest to some popular trails, including ones to Vernal Fall and Mirror Lake.
Yosemite officials are trying to alleviate traffic congestion in busy Yosemite Valley with a new pilot program that will be in place until at least August. It includes things like opening bus lanes to all vehicles, and reconfiguring the flow of traffic in Yosemite Valley.
Yosemite’s move to increase visitation to about 90% of normal is approximately 6,480 vehicles a day in Yosemite.
The park last year had a goal of 3,600 vehicles a day in the park, about half of normal summer levels.
That increased incrementally this year to a 5,760 target for daily vehicles, Morse said. That’s 80% of normal, what Yosemite previously announced it wouldn’t rise above in 2021.
A graphic Morse shared showed there was an actual average of 6,079 vehicles in Yosemite each day in 2021 and a 4,207 daily average in 2020, slightly above the target goals.
Yosemite spokesman Scott Gediman said the 90% of normal number will be the capacity through September based on public health guidelines and available staffing. Gediman said park operations should return to more normalcy in the fall and winter.
COVID-19 update and Yosemite road construction delays
Yosemite officials haven’t shared the number of COVID-19 cases in the park, but coronavirus has been reported in Yosemite, including through detection in Yosemite sewage tested at waste water treatment facilities. That testing is “ongoing,” said George Carroll, a public health representative for Yosemite via the U.S. Public Health Service.
Coronavirus variants have also been detected in Yosemite sewage, including the Delta variant, which health officials said is more contagious and results in more serious illness than previous variants.
“And we’ve identified Delta in a case recently in the last week of a park employee,” Carroll said. “So we continue to monitor this. Luckily we have our medical clinic here in the (Yosemite) Valley, so we have diagnostic testing, screening testing, available to our staff and we continue to recommend isolation and quarantine to folks as needed.”
Much of Yosemite sits in rural Mariposa County, which has reported some of the fewest cases of COVID-19 in the state, but California counties around the park in the central San Joaquin Valley have been some of the hardest hit by the virus.
“As we all know,” Gediman said, “the state of California retired the blueprint for the safe economy, and so now we’re going into the CDC guidelines ... When we transitioned over, where we were at in the orange-to-yellow tier with Mariposa County and the other counties, that translated into the moderate tier for CDC, which basically dictated to keep our visitation around the 80% level.”
However, Gediman said the park will now increase that to close to 90% with some recent openings, including 105 campsites next week at Bridalveil Creek Campground, and commercial tour buses running in Yosemite.
There are many changes in Yosemite this year driven by the COVID-19 pandemic and staffing constraints. Yosemite National Park has a list of them on its website. The park’s concessionaire, Yosemite Hospitality, run by Aramark, has more updates, including about restaurants, at travelyosemite.com.
There’s also widespread Yosemite construction occurring on trails, new facilities, parking lots and roads, including along the Tioga Road which crosses over Yosemite to the Eastern Sierra.
Park officials said visitors should traffic delays, normally around a half hour, along Tioga Road from sunrise to sunset, with delays up to an hour overnight, and shorter 15-minute delays during commuter hours, 6 a.m. to 8 a.m., and 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.
This story was originally published July 9, 2021 at 8:20 AM.
