Yosemite Reopens Thursday With Limited Camping, Half Of Usual Permits For This Time of Year

When Davis couple Amy George and her husband Kyle Monhollen heard Yosemite National Park was reopening Thursday with online day passes only they rushed to see if there were any left. 

“I was drinking my coffee,” she said. “I was like, I’m just gonna see … July 22 has some day passes. Great, that's our 20th anniversary, Kyle and I.”

Yosemite is opening with many restrictions after shutting down in March to protect people from COVID-19. Only about half of the average June visitors will be allowed in, and they must make an online reservation for each car in advance. Also, shuttles aren’t operating as of now.

The reservations can be made at www.recreation.gov and cost $2. The park began accepting reservations Tuesday and 1,700 passes will be issued for day-use and 1,900 for vehicles for those with reservations for camping and hotel reservations. 

“We're going to be monitoring conditions daily, we're going to make adjustments as needed, and we're going to work to maintain safe conditions for visitors,” said Jamie Richards, a spokesperson for the park.

Those that arrive at the park without verification, preferably printed, will be turned around at the gate. People who visit on Yosemite Area Regional Transportation System (YARTS), by bus, on foot or on horseback don’t need a day-use reservation. Credit cards will be the only form of payment accepted for park entrance fees. Annual pass holders still need to get a day-use reservation ahead of time. 

A two-site horse camp is open and one large campground is open at 50% of capacity, the others are closed due to staffing. Richards says it’ll be interesting to see how animals in the park respond again to people. 

“We've seen a lot of bears out and active,” she said. “We will see when the park reopens how the animals continue to react and adapt to visitors coming back.”

The closure and scaled down reopening is having a huge impact on gateway communities.

“It's a light at the end of the tunnel,” said Tony McDaniel with the Yosemite Mariposa County Tourism Bureau. “It means we're getting to that place where a sense of normalcy is returning.”

Last year visitors spent more than $1.7 billion in the four California counties that surround the park. Brooke Smith, with Visit Yosemite Madera County, says that could drop by as much as half this year.

“Between fires and government shutdowns this is definitely the longest we've ever gone with Yosemite National Park being closed,” she said. 

Smith says it’s not all negative for short-term rental owners, because people are escaping the Central Valley for places like Bass Lake near Oakhurst. 

“We have businesses who have never seen so much business for their vacation rental properties,” she said. “It's very interesting. People are loving the Airbnb model right now and they are booked and sold-out in many places.”

Even with the shutdown the real estate market in the hills of Madera County has been in a decent place for Oakhurst based London Properties Realtor Katie Miller.

She thought she was going to see a turndown of sales when COVID-19 restrictions began, but she says “fortunately for us, sometimes, you know, you get locked in with family members or people for two months. They feel like they need a bigger home like real quick.”

One company anticipating the opening is the Yosemite Sugar Pine Mountain Railroad, which shut down with the rest of California in March. 

“We lost every single tour group and school group that we had coming up here,” said Scott McGhee, who runs the operation. 

This isn’t the first time the historic railroad has had to close down. 

"We've had our share of incidents beyond our control," McGhee said. “The last major one being a wildfire that happened very close to our property. And then another wildfire that happened miles away from here, but the smoke affected us.”

He is excited the park is open and is excited to open with a slough of safety protocols in place, including only accepting online reservations.

“We don't want to attract huge groups of people,” he said. “We hope that in those cities and surrounding communities they come and rediscover us this summer.”

Others like Colette Goga, who runs the dog-friendly Yosemite Wine Tails on Highway 41 in Oakhurst, says she almost went out of business.  

“It’s been harsh,” she admitted. “That's three months rent, three months of utilities and zero income. It's been eye opening and gut wrenching.”

For the first two months she delivered wine, but Goga says she hasn’t had any business in a month. Goga plans to open this weekend as the park opens and says she didn’t qualify for federal loans.

“To only be open for four or five months will pretty much catch me up,” she said. “But you shut me down again for three more months and I'm going to be toast.”