There are three main campgrounds in the valley, North Pines, Lower Pines, and Upper Pines. The lower and upper pines sites are available 5 months in advance on the 15th of each month. For example, sites for May 15 through June 14 are available on January 15th at 7am PST. If you are looking to go in the summer, make sure you are free on the 15th of January, February, March, and April at 7am. The North Pines Campground reservation system is more complex and not fully explained in this article. All reservations are made online at recreation.gov. No matter what campground or day you wish to go, you will have extreme competition.
It took me 2 years to get camping reservations in the valley. The mission began in Fall 2021, when the idea of a classic Yosemite camping trip started stewing in my brain. I did my research and planned to attempt to get reservations on the 15th of each upcoming winter month. I used December 15th, 2021 as a practice round to learn how the system worked and gauge how competitive it would be. December 15th was the time slot to get reservations for April 15 through May 14. I did not want these dates. Thus, when I successfully got a campsite in my shopping cart, I took notes of the process and deleted it from the cart.
January 15th, 2022 was a nightmare. I last minute remembered it was reservation day and frantically opened my computer minutes before 7am. When the clock struck 7, I attempted to add a campsite to my cart but received the notification that I needed to log in. I then realized I didn’t even know my password! After a 10 minute password reset, the campsites were long gone. This was a grade A rookie move. The one tip Yosemite provides to people attempting to get campsite reservations is to log in ahead of time. For the next 3 months, I either forgot to attempt to get reservations or was busy on the reservation day. I clearly did not have the motivation needed to go to Yosemite.
I decided to try my luck again the next year and come January 15th, 2023, I was feeling confident. At 7am, I clicked the “add to cart” button and received a notification that the spot had been taken. I then desperately tried to add a different site to my cart. It was taken too. Everything had been taken within seconds. I sat around for 30 minutes hoping that a site would pop up, but nothing did. In December 2021, my first reservation choice also failed but I was able to scurry around to get a different one. Not the case this time. This was the big leagues. I realized you had one shot at one campsite, that was it.
Fast forward one month, I had just finished my morning shower when I noticed a sticky note reminder on my desk titled “Yosemite Reservations!”. I flung open my laptop and made it to the online reservation window with one minute to spare. Adrenaline was pumping through my veins and I decided to hit the “add to cart” button five seconds before 7. It worked! I had landed 3 nights over the last weekend in June at Upper Pines Campground. What a rush.
A common saying in the engineering world is that good science is reproducible science. Below is a list of steps documenting my methods,
1. Log into recreation.gov and go to the reservation page of the campground you want to visit.
2. On the top of the page select the dates and site you wish to get. See below,
3. In the calendar bar next to the site number, highlight/select all of the dates you wish to get. See screenshot below,
4. Open a real time clock like this: https://time.is/
5. Click add to cart at 6:59:55.
The site and dates you choose play a huge role in your success. In my case, I wanted three nights over a weekend in June. I chose Upper Pines Campground because it seemed slightly less desirable than Lower Pines, thus less competitive to get a spot at. I didn’t spend the time researching a specific spot number because I wasn’t sure I’d even be successful. I also figured the better spots would be more competitive to attain. On reservation day, I was actually so pressed with time that I selected the first non-RV site I saw, without even knowing the specific location. I ended up with site 181 at Upper Pines Campground. It was your typical sardine packed Yosemite site on the inside of one of the campground loops. It was definitely not ideal, but that could have played a part in me landing it. Nonetheless, I was stoked.
Now the story does not end here. The months leading up to the trip were filled with even more drama than the prior. Yosemite allows a max of six people to stay at each campsite, so I now had five golden tickets to distribute to my friends. Turns out having this job is more of a curse than a blessing. I ended up forming a group of seven, thinking that we could probably get away with one extra person. The most questionable part was could seven of us comfortably fit in this tiny site? I wasn’t sure of it, especially with the chance that two dogs might also attend.
My eyes were peeled for solutions to this overcrowding. During the first week of June, I was browsing the Yosemite website and came across a potential holy grail. The top of the North Pines Campground page had an alert stating,
“Some sites held back for flooding will be released for reservations on Wednesday, June 7 between 7:00 am and 7:30 am Pacific time, through Saturday, June 10. Sites released are 201 203 206 301 311 313 314 315 316 319 320 321 322 323 517 519 520 522. Additional sites and dates will be released as conditions permit. Updates will be posted here.”
I was ecstatic. This brought to my attention that some Yosemite sites had yet to be released and that we might have a shot to reserve a one for the same dates we had our Upper Pines site for. Specifically, every year, some reservations for late May to early July at North and Lower Pines Campgrounds are not available 5 months in advance because it is unknown whether these campsites will be flooded at the time. As the dates approach and the rangers have a better idea of the water levels, they determine if they will release the held back sites. The alert I saw was a notification that there was going to be some sort of upcoming site release on June 7th, 2023. But, the notice was incredibly hard to decipher and I wasn’t sure if our dates were being released. I tried to get a hold of the Yosemite Valley ranger station to clarify it, but that proved impossible. What I figured was even if our reservation dates weren’t released at the time stated by the alert, we should be on recreation.gov to see what happens. It would act as a practice round, so that when our dates were released we would know the system.
I recruited some of the crew to attend the site release and created a pdf detailing the steps to nab a site. But when I opened my laptop at 6:30 am that morning, there was a new notice on the North Pines page.
“Due to an unexpected increase of highwater, no sites at Lower Pines and North Pines will be released tomorrow, June 7. We will continue to monitor conditions and release sites when conditions permit. Updates will be posted here.”
I told my team to go back to bed. I was disappointed but we still had two weeks until our trip, so there was still a chance the sites could be released beforehand. Everyday I checked the North Pines page for a new alert, but nothing popped up. Our odds looked bleak. I originally assumed that water levels would drop with time and that the North Pines sites would surely open by the last weekend in June. In actuality, the water levels are a function of time and temperature. With the high snowpack from the legendary 2023 winter, the June heat had the water levels going crazy.
I was tracking the Merced river gage height and flow predictions using the NOAA CNRFC tool. Come the week of the trip, a heat wave was subsiding and flows were expected to drop. I still had an ounce of hope that the North Pines sites would be released before we departed on Thursday. Sure enough, when I checked the webpage Wednesday morning, a new alert had been posted. It stated that eighteen North Pines sites would be released tomorrow morning between 7 and 7:30am. They would be released for dates through the weekend.
At this point, one person had already backed out of the trip, so it wasn’t necessary we obtained a site. But after looking into what sites were being released, I wanted to get one more than ever. These North Pines sites were absolute bangers. They were waterfront, spacious, and had immaculate views. I called my fellow crew member Jack and he too was hypnotized by the quality of these sites. We came up with the plan that each of us would attempt to get a different site when they were released. He planned to have two computers, so we would get our go at 3 sites. We believed these were the best 3 sites available.
When the morning came, Jack and I hopped on a phone call and opened our laptops. The sites were being released between 7 and 7:30am. We were leaving for Yosemite at 1pm. Around 7:10am, the sites became available. We hastily made all the clicks needed to add a reservation to our carts. We then painfully watched our screens load and hoped for a notification that the sites had made it into our carts. My screen continued to load and I began screaming at Jack for his status. I then realized my reservation page had crashed. Jack’s response across the line was in similar panic. He too had lost connection to the reservation page. But, Jack had two computers going. One computer crapped out, while the other one beautifully displayed North Pines Campground site 504 in his cart. We erupted with joy. Yosemite’s heartless reservation system once again put a huge smile on my face.
In the end, this trip was well worth the two years spent attaining reservations. My effort may seem excessive, but as time goes on it will only get harder to acquire these campsites. The Yosemite reservation system constantly changes to account for the increase in demand. Many of the specifics of this article will soon seem meaningless. But no matter what, if you put in the effort, you will surely find your way to the valley.
Update 2024-03-17
To verify my methods I attempted to attain reservations on 2024-02-15 and 2024-03-15 at 7am. On 2024-02-15, I clicked add to cart 5 seconds before 7am and received an error that the sites were not released yet. I continued attempting to add the sites to my cart with no prevail. On 2024-03-15, I clicked add to cart 2 seconds before 7 and received the same error I got before. But after three additional attempts, I landed the sites. So it seems to me there is a bit of luck comes with this reservation system. That said, your odds are high as long as you are prepared and fast with your clicks. In the past two years, I am 2 for 4 when fully prepared on reservation day. Below is a screen recording of me acquiring reservations.