Reservations Will Return to Yosemite Later in May

GETTING TO GLACIER POINT, making for El Capitan, finding your way to the banks of the marvelous Merced River? You're going to need a map, maybe, if you've never been, and some filling snacks, surely, to keep your energy high, and you'll likely want a companion at your side, the sort of person who will exhale, emotionally, as you encounter all of the epic-a-tude of Yosemite National Park. And if you visit between May 20 and September 30, 2022, and enter the park between 6 a.m. and 4 in the afternoon? You will also need a reservation, in addition to everything else you've packed or brought along. For the popular national park is returning to a book-your-entry-ahead-of-time summer plan, which it instituted in both 2020 and 2021, as a response to the pandemic. The announcement was shared on the park's social feeds on Feb. 16, 2022, just a few months out from when visitorship swells.

THERE ARE ASTERISKS... to consider when planning your warm-weather Big Y idyll. If you have a lodging reservation, including camping, the hotels, or a vacation rental, you won't need a separate entry reservation. Same goes for a wilderness permit, Half Dome permits, and if you're part of a tour group, or on a tour bus, same deal (so this would include YARTS, the Public Transit to Yosemite). "Building on lessons learned during the summer reservation systems in 2020 and 2021, the peak hours reservation system is designed to spread visitation out and reduce chronic congestion in the park," shared the park in a Facebook post. The National Park Service is addressing all of the above, and more need-to-knows about the returning Yosemite National Park reservation system, in this helpful FAQ.