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Please Note YosemiteSites is not affiliated with the National Park Service. Any advice expressed on this web page is mearly the opinion of a occasional visitor to the park, and should be verified by a park official if it seriously effects your travel plans. |
To make a reservation, visit the National Park Service home page, or call 1 (877) 444-6777.
Reservations for Curry Village and the Yosemite Lodge are run by Yosemite Concessions.
The graphs are updated every day. From time to time something goes wrong with the queries. If you think you have spotted an error please let me know by using the form at the end of the page. It would be great if you could include as much detail as you have, for instance which graph is wrong.
Yosemite Valley Campgrounds
Campgrounds Outside Yosemite Valley
- Upper Pines: open year round, reservations required; tents & RVs.
- Lower Pines: open March - Oct, reservations required; tents & RVs.
- North Pines: open April - Sept, reservations required; tents & RVs.
- Sunnyside Walk In (Camp 4): open year round (no reservations needed; first come are first served); tents only.
- Hodgdon Meadow (Hwy. 120 West near Big Oak Flat entrance): open year round, reservations required May - Sept; tents & RVs.
- Wawona (Hwy. 41 in Wawona): open year round, reservations required May - Sept; tents & RVs.
- Tuolumne Meadows (Hwy. 120 East): open July - Sept, 50% reservations, 50% first come are first served; tents & RVs.
- Porcupine Flat (Hwy. 120 East): open July - early Sept, first come are first served; tents & RVs.
- Yosemite Creek (Hwy. 120 East): open July - early Sept, first come are first served; tents & small RVs.
- White Wolf (Hwy. 120 East): open July - early Sept, first come are first served; tents & small RVs.
- Tamarack Flat (Hwy. 120 East): open June - early Sept, first come are first served; tents & small RVs.
- Crane Flat (Hwy. 120 near Tioga Road turnoff): open June - Sept, reservations required; tents & RVs.
- Bridalveil Creek (Glacier Point Road): open July - early Sept, first come are first served; tents & RVs.
There just aren't enough sites to go around. Here are my suggestions:
- Don't limit your search to the Valley. Crane Flat, Hodgdon Meadow, and Wawona are only a short drive from the Valley and in less demand. Availability for these camps are listed under "Proximity" on this web site.
- Check for cancellations. People are forced to reserve far in advance, and often cancel at the last moment. If you call or check the web on Thursday or Friday you can sometimes pick up a vacancy for the weekend.
- Try you luck with the walk in campgrounds. Camp 4 (aka Sunnyside) is in the Valley, and does not accept advanced reservations. Each morning at 7 or 8 am the rangers distribute any available sites on a first-come first-serve basis. There is often a line of seekers. Also consider the many first come first serve campgrounds outside the valley.
- Don't camp illegally. If you don't have a campsite, you will need to leave the valley. The rangers are skilled in discovering illegal campers, both in cars and behind rocks. The fines for even a first time offense are high (several hundred dollars) and you could spend the night in jail.
Sites in Wawona, Hodgdon Meadows, Crane Flat, Tuolumne Meadows & at the Pines Campgrounds in Yosemite Valley are $18. Bridalveil Creek & White Wolf are $12. Tamarack Flat, Yosemite Creek & Porcupine Flat are $8. Backpacker Camps in Yosemite Valley, Tuolumne Meadows, Hetch Hetchy & Camp 4 (Sunnyside) are $5. Group Camps are $40. Stock Camps are $25.
The Pines Campgrounds each accommodate up to six people and has space for two cars.
The Park Service accepts reservations five months in advance, starting on the 15th of each month:
If you call on You can make reservations with arrival dates between January 15 January 16 - June 14 February 15 February 16 - July 14 March 15 March 16 - August 14 April 15 April 16 - September 14 May 15 May 16 - October 14 June 15 June 16 - November 14 July 15 July 16 - December 14 August 15 August 16 - January 14 September 15 September 16 - February 14 October 15 October 16 - March 14 November 15 November 16 - April 14 December 15 December 16 - May 14
All food must be stored in bear boxes. Fixed metal boxes are provided at each campsite. They are approximately 3 feet deep, 3 feet wide, and 2 feet high.
Upper Pines, Lower Pines, North Pines, Valley Floor, Entire Park.
I've collected the brief descriptions that the Park Service uses for their sites here: Upper Pines, Lower Pines, North Pines. I honestly don't know what all of the terms they use mean, so please don't ask. You may notice gaps in the numbering, this is because some sites have been removed over the years because they flood too often or because they are so close to the toilets or roads that its just no fun to camp in them.
It appears that Lower and North Pines are more desirable than Upper Pines, probably because they are smaller campgrounds. As far as which site is the best in any given camp, it's hard to say - I try to pick ones that are far from the bathrooms, and not two crowded. Check the maps.
Have a look at John Rabold's Activity Listings.
Yes, a permit is required for overnight stays in the wilderness. Day hikers do not need one. All the details are here.
It varies seasonally, but typically they go up mid-to-late May, or early June (they try to have them up by Memorial Day) and they come down around the first week in October.
If you need specifics, you can try calling the good folks below, but do let me know the answer and I will post it here so that we don't all call them (its not really their job!)
- Yosemite Mountain School and Guide Service (209) 372-8435
- Yosemite Mountaineering Shop (209) 372-8396
An excellent FAQ can be found at YosemitePark.Net.
Several other quality resources are listed on the link page.
Unless your trailer is very small it will not fit in the parking spaces allotted for standard tent sites, so you should reserve a trailer site. If there are none available, you could consider leaving your trailer parked near by, perhaps on the road where there is limited overflow parking, but rangers may or may not permit this. You will definitely not be permitted to sleep in your trailer if it is parked on the road.
The graphs here are only updated three times a day, so it is entirely possible that someone else has already reserved the site. Sorry! Also, we only check tent site availability, so if you have an RV there will probably be fewer sites.
In the busy summer months it only takes a few minutes before a canceled site has a new owner, so short of having a real-time system with a live tie-in to the NPS there is almost no hope of this site always being correct.
The web based interface provided by the Park Service great way to make reservations for a campgrounds that are mostly empty, but they don't make it easy to search for the one or two spots that may be available in a very busy campground like Yosemite. We've created tools to automate this search task, and made the results available to you here.
The graphs are formed by making a number of queries to the standard interface at the NPS and parsing up the results. You could compile this same data yourself, but it's quite a hassle.
Daily.
Each bar represents the number of sites that are still available to reserve on that day. (Not to be confused with the total number of camp sites that exist in that campground, which are not plotted.)
No. We are mearly fellow visitors of the park, like you. We know how hard it is to find a campsite, and knew how to help, so we did.
If you've found this site helpful, consider tossing a buck in the tip jar! PayPal lets you use make a donation with your credit card. It only takes a minute, and of course it's secure.If you would like to contribute your time, artistic talent (please!), web hosting, or kind words to this effort let us know!
We currently only search based on tent camping.
