With visitor numbers continuing to increase since the initial spike during the 2020 travel shutdowns, Yosemite National Park in central California has tried to navigate the traffic flow with a timed-entry booking system. The system requires visitors coming during the peak months of April through October to register for a slot on the National Park Service (NPS) website.
While the requirement was suspended at the end of last October for the period including colder months, Yosemite authorities announced that the timed-entry system would be reintroduced on weekends starting from February 2025 and potentially for other months later in the year.
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That plan, first reported by the Los Angeles Times, is now in doubt as park authorities wait for instructions from the Trump administration on whether to relaunch the reservation portal.
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How to make Yosemite reservations for summer
Yosemite reported nearly four million visitors in 2024, with slots during popular summer periods often booked weeks or even months ahead of time. The portal for booking spring and summer 2025 visits was supposed to open in February, but the online portal is currently not accepting reservations.Â
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“Yosemite National Park anticipates sharing details about this year’s reservation system early in 2025,” the park’s page reads as of February 6.
While an NPS official has yet to confirm a reason for the delay, the LA Times reports that park authorities are waiting for the Trump administration to approve the online system.
Amid the current administration’s moves to cut government spending by abruptly shuttering agencies and revoking funding, park rangers reported being on high alert about job cuts that could sow chaos during the busiest visitor periods.
The reservation freeze applies only to reservations for driving into the park itself and not for the popular Firefall attraction, a natural phenomenon in which the sun hits Horsetail Fall at an angle that makes it look like a stream of golden water is running through the rock formation.
Yosemite thanks public for their ‘engagement’, waits for further instructions for reservation system
This year, Firefall will be visible from Feb. 8 to 23. Due to the high numbers of tourists and photographers who descend upon the area on holidays and weekends to view the phenomenon, the park has required a reservation made through the NPS website for years.
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Visitors can drive up and explore Yosemite as before, but they will not know how crowded it will be; the reservation system has also been used to inform visitors of entrance numbers and then cap them if they reach a tipping point.
When pressed by local outlets, the NPS issued a statement saying that it “recognize[d] the importance of providing clarity on that system as soon as possible to accommodate peak summer season travel planning” and thanked “the robust public engagement” that it says played a role in the initial decision to bring back the timed-entry system for 2025.
While numerous national parks across the country — Arches, Acadia and Glacier among others — have introduced similar reservation systems, Yosemite is the first national park affected by Trump’s unprecedented crackdown on government agencies.
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