Yosemite National Park’s famed Tioga Road — a 46-mile route through the park’s scenic high country — has closed for the winter.
One of the marquee drives in America’s national park system, the winding, two-lane route bisects Yosemite’s alpine center, passing through meadows and forests of lodgepole pine and juniper. It runs from Crane Flat to Tioga Pass, where it crests at 9,945 feet along the highest highway pass in California.
“We’ve had a few storm systems over the last couple of weeks, and even though they didn’t produce a lot of snow, there is some snow and ice at the higher elevations along the Tioga Road,” said Scott Gediman, a Yosemite spokesman. “With the cold temperatures at night it isn’t melting. For safety reasons, we decided to close it for the season.”
Park officials temporarily closed the road Nov. 15, and made the closure permanent for the winter season on Tuesday afternoon. Typically the road closes due to snow and ice in November and reopens in May or June.
After huge amounts of snow last winter left the snowpack at Tuolumne Meadows at 244% of its historical average, Tioga Road didn’t reopen to the public until July 22 — the latest date in 90 years, when modern records began. Crews with snowplows finally cleared the road by summer, but it had suffered damage that highway crews needed to repair.
The route for centuries was a footpath for Indians, upgraded to a mining road in 1883 during a brief silver boom, and then a private toll road that charged $2 per horse and rider.
In an unusual act of philanthropy, it became public and part of the park in 1915, when Stephen Mather, the first director of the National Park Service, bought it for $15,000 with his own money and donations from the Sierra Club and the Modesto Chamber of Commerce. He sold it to Congress that year for $10, hoping to bring more tourists into the park.
Meanwhile, in another sign that winter is arriving, Yosemite opened the ice skating rink Wednesday at Curry Village.
Glacier Point Road, another high-elevation route popular with visitors, is temporarily closed due to snow and ice but may reopen soon, Gediman said.
“We’ll reassess later in the week,” he said. “It’s a little lower in elevation than Tioga Road.”
Yosemite park and its campgrounds, restaurants and hotels remain open, and other roads in the park are plowed year-round when covered with snow, but accumulated snow on Glacier Point and Tioga roads can pile many feet high in colder months. As a result, the park closes both of them each winter, and reopens them every spring.
There was so much snow last winter in Yosemite’s high country that it limited the time that construction crews could work on a major project to modernize and revamp Tuolumne Meadows campground. As a result, the campground won’t reopen until 2025, instead of 2024 as had been previously planned, Gediman said.
Although there was no snow in Yosemite Valley Wednesday, the changing of the seasons is in the air, he said.
“It’s nice and chilly, people have big jackets and hats on,” he said. “It’s definitely feeling like winter.”
For 24-hour road and weather information for Yosemite National Park, please call 209-372-0200