Yosemite Valley Ran Out of Parking Before 11 a.m. on Saturday and Summer Hasn’t Even Started

Yosemite National Park hit capacity in its most popular area before most visitors had finished breakfast on Saturday morning.

All parking in Yosemite Valley was full by 10:59 a.m. on May 2, prompting the park to issue an alert telling visitors to avoid the valley entirely. About 90 minutes later, Hetch Hetchy parking also filled up and traffic at the south entrance on Highway 41 was backed up roughly an hour and a half.

The early May crunch is notable because summer crowds typically do not peak until June, July and August, when monthly visitation regularly tops half a million people. This was a spring Saturday.

It was also the first real test of what Yosemite looks like without a reservation system. The Trump administration announced in February that visitors would no longer need reservations to enter Yosemite, Arches or Glacier national parks. Park officials said the move was meant to improve public access.

Superintendent Ray McPadden has defended the decision, arguing that a parkwide reservation system was an overreaction to a problem that mostly affected valley parking on certain summer Saturdays. He said the park would rely on real-time traffic management, added staffing and efforts to redirect visitors to less crowded areas.

But former superintendent Cicely Muldoon, who helped develop the reservation policy before retiring, warned earlier this year that vehicle capacity in Yosemite Valley has hard limits.

The park is urging visitors to arrive early, use public transportation when possible and avoid driving between destinations once inside the valley. For anyone planning a trip this summer, weekdays and early mornings are your best bet.