Yosemite Saturdays – On a busy Saturday that arrives long before the official summer rush, drivers in Yosemite National Park circle entrance after entrance for parking—while shuttle stops reach maximum capacity and visitors abandon plans mid-day. Yosemite Superintendent Ray McPadd
For 45 minutes Saturday morning, Cynthia Aparicil and Ulises Martinez inched through traffic toward the entrance of Yosemite National Park. Once they finally got in, they headed straight for Yosemite Valley—only to circle parking lot after parking lot, unable to find a spot.
Aparicil, who was visiting from Orange County, watched people search in ways that didn’t feel safe. “There are smaller parking lots where it was just like five people were just waiting for one spot. ” she said as Martinez unpacked their hatchback in an unofficial spot. “On the side of the road, it was packed. Some people were just like parking crazy, sticking out, and we don’t want to park like that.”.
This was Saturdays in Yosemite National Park—before Memorial Day, and well before peak summer season. For the first time since 2023, visitors will no longer need a reservation to enter the park on busy summer days. The shift matters: last year. Yosemite Valley moved to a reservation system that began in June. with officials aiming to make the park easier to visit. The trade-off, they readily acknowledge, is crowds on peak-season weekends—especially Saturdays.
In the middle of a weekend scramble. Yosemite Superintendent Ray McPadden said Saturday mornings in particular will be busy. while other days are “mostly ‘fine.’” In an interview with the Chronicle earlier this month. he described the approach he’s trying to take now. “We’re not going to create elaborate restrictions for people,” McPadden said. “I think, generally, people have a high tolerance for other people around them.”.
But in the weeks leading up to Memorial Day. the park’s alerts have been coming fast and early—messages that parking in specific areas is already full. “Curry Village parking full. Parking may be available at Yosemite Falls parking area.” “All parking in Yosemite Village is full.” “All parking at Glacier Point is full.” This weekend. with beautiful weather. the alerts came even Friday morning as well.
Memorial Day weekend—widely described in online chatter as a “zoo,” in the words of one Reddit user—has become the next stress test. For many visitors, the question is no longer whether to come, but whether they can navigate the day once they arrive.
Martinez said his Saturday experience was sharply different from earlier visits when entry required a reservation. Then, he said, he waited in line for up to 15 minutes to get through the entrance and was able to find parking without resorting to an unofficial area.
Around noon Saturday, near the Yosemite Falls Trailhead, cars crawled through lanes as the parking lot filled and spillover began. Cindy Woythal. from the Tahoe area. said she and her daughter had reserved a camping spot in the adjacent campground—but she had little hope of finding a parking place close by. She pointed to cars competing with her for space and said it felt like she would be stuck driving around the valley.
“It’s going to be back to taking your entire day to drive around the valley. ” she said while she slowly moved along in a line of vehicles searching for an open spot. Woythal said the reservation system was a “big issue” when it first came out a couple of years ago. but that people adapted. “And now this is what you get, you get too many people.”.
She described the moment that pushed her past frustration into anger—when a car behind her honked while she and her daughter were trying to set up their tents. “Then you have impatient people like that,” Woythal said before driving out of the lot.
Not everyone saw the chaos as a failure. Alfredo Espino, of Santa Clarita (Los Angeles County), said he ultimately found a spot after searching for about 20 minutes. Still, he said parking had remained difficult even when he came with a reservation.
“It’s still kind of a nightmare,” Espino said while applying sunscreen. He added that with a reservation system, he felt it was harder to get into the park. “You have to really plan ahead because everybody is trying to get in here as opposed to just being able to come.” Within three minutes after he parked. two hopeful drivers asked whether he was leaving.
McPadden said he has been responding to these patterns with operational changes. Since becoming superintendent last year. he said he helped fend off a planned permanent reservation policy. and he is now dedicating more staffing to traffic control in busy Yosemite Valley. He is also encouraging visitors to purchase digital entry passes to reduce backups at the gates.
The pressure building at the park is not just about access rules. Yosemite saw an unexpected 45% jump in visitation in March over a year earlier. as warm. dry weather drew people in and sped up the snowmelt feeding the waterfalls. While McPadden does not expect attendance to jump above average as sharply as it did in March. he said the peak season will still be busy. “I’m expecting visitation to go up, and that’s fine,” he said.
On Saturday, the crowding in parking areas reshaped plans on the ground. Some visitors abandoned the hikes they had set out for in the valley after encountering fierce parking competition. Alondra Garcia. of Modesto. sat at a shuttle stop after her search for parking led her nearly 4 miles away from her desired hike at Mist Trail.
Garcia called the process frustrating and said she wished she knew when exactly the shuttles—which depart every 8 to 22 minutes—were scheduled to come. She said she would prefer a reservation system if it meant avoiding the traffic hassles she had encountered before boarding.
The shuttle system appeared to be operating at maximum capacity through Saturday. On at least three occasions. fully loaded shuttles passed by crowds of people waiting at the stop. leaving some visitors visibly confused or frustrated. At another point. a shuttle driver laid on a horn for at least 10 seconds to clear three cars idling in front of a shuttle stop.
The day’s bottlenecks also carried over into the visitors center. One shuttle packed with people rolled into the visitors center around 5 p.m. to meet a crowd waiting at the stop. The driver told passengers to disembark because the vehicle was going out of service—nearly doubling the number of people outside the stop. Soon after, another bus arrived already filled to capacity. One visitor remarked that they should have just left after lunch.
For people trying to avoid the busiest conditions, park officials urged them to visit midweek, or to arrive very early or very late in the day. McPadden said some groups long for a past with far fewer visitors, but that expecting a quieter park than today is unreasonable.
He also said the National Park Service plans to survey visitors this summer about their experience in the park, and that media reports have exaggerated congestion. “Just because we say parking is full, it doesn’t mean there’s chaos in the park,” he said.
Even with that argument, the Saturday scene in Yosemite Valley told a different story for the visitors stuck searching: 45 minutes to reach the gate, then another round of circling—because the park’s peak weekend crowd arrived early, and the parking was already gone.
Yosemite National Park Yosemite Valley parking full shuttle Memorial Day weekend Ray McPadden digital entry passes reservations Curry Village Glacier Point Yosemite Falls Trailhead Mist Trail