Camping at Yosemite

Hey TW,

My gf and I would like to visit and camp at Yosemite National Park for the upcoming President's Day weekend in February. We don't have reservations for a campsite yet so we're going to wing it and hopefully snag a spot in Upper Pines. Anyone here have experience with first come first serve at Yosemite? What time should I arrive in the morning to request a spot? Also, any good camping spots outside of Yosemite?

Thank you!!!

 

I know a few campsites are closed for public safety due to the overwhelming amounts of human feces.

 

Presidents day is super busy up there, and with them coming off the shutdown it's going to be even more crazy. I would at least call one of the rangers stations and see what they say your chances of grabbing a spot are, before committing.

 

I think it was tuolumne meadows campground that we showed up to at around 830-9am to get on a wait list of about 30. Said they would call by 11 with and update if we could stay.

Signed up, drove back towards porcupine flat CG and grabbed a site right away.

Grossss...

 

It/s quite an ordeal getting a campsite at Upper Pines. There are windows of time where you can reserve for a specific month, and even that is difficult because once the camp sites open up for reservations, they typically sell out within seconds. I've done it a couple times in the past and my buddies and I are all on the website on different computers waiting for it to go live at 7AM, and only then do some of us get sites.

https://recreationonestopprod.servi...sys_id=72fff607dbe8a30022f970c08c961990&table

 

I stayed at camp 4 two summers ago. First come first serve. Showed up there around 6am to get a spot and there were about 35 climbers in line ahead of us sleeping on the dirt waiting for the ranger to show up to hand out passes. We were one of the last ones in line to get a camping pass so my advice is to get there as early as you can and wait in line.

 

I've gotten a spot at Upper Pines and Camp 4 one time each with no issues and showed up super late with no reservation.

The trick is wait for a weekend where it is thoroughly dumping snow. Most likely you will have most of the place to yourself.

 

That's awesome and thanks for the tip! Do you remember which month you visited?

 

May go down to Yosemite this weekend for a little getaway. Debating on camping in the valley or staying nearby. Hmm...

 

It’s been awhile but the rangers didn’t used to monitor Camp 4 as closely off season so you could usually find a spot (probably sharing w/hipster climbers) until around March or April. Summertime forget about it unless you arrive midweek but early season sometimes works.

There are also campsites for backpackers you can crash in if you say you’re headed out into back country after but I don’t remember if you can stay more than one night.

Also if you feel brave there are slit of cancellations and sometimes showing up at pines you can snag a spot but need a backup plan if that fails.

 

Stayed there years ago. Visited my sister who lived in San Francisco at the time. We just showed up and got a camp site. It probably helped that it wasn't the weekend.

 

We got lucky and found a site available in Upper Pines that weekend. Feels goooood

 

Tuolumne Meadows

 

Hogdon Meadows is still "in the park" will have to get up early to get parking in the valley. Site kind of sucked super close to each other but its a last resort.

 

Its been snowing a lot lately which may help you out as far as tourist. We've been through the park a couple of times within the last month, once when the shutdown was going on. There were still rangers and it was snowing at the time. They only had SR-140 entrance open, and even that entrance had been shut down early in the day prior due to heavy snow. We're (Merced) scheduled to have a good amount of rain the rest of the week and weekend which means Yosemite will be getting snow the whole week/weekend. Side note if you go and go in the SR-140 entrance there's a taco truck in Planada CA on the corner of Plainsburg Road and SR-140 called Ramon's Tacos. If you're into tacos they were rated the best in Merced County : )

 

Thanks for the tip! Our reservation to Upper Pines was cancelled due to damages from the last storm so we'll be camping at Camp 4.

 

Yosemite was awesome! Camp 4 not so much lol. Parking was far from our site so we had to make multiple trips to my truck to get all the camping gear in 2 feet of snow. Ended up staying for 1 night since we used up all of our propane for the heater and the following night was supposed to be colder. Can't wait to return in the spring/summer!

 

Love the pictures! Never been there with this much snow.

 

Nice pictures! Looked like a great time snow camping.