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General Climbing Discussion

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Yosemite, J-tree and bishop 7-Jun-2005 At 10:28:45 PM SteveH

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From Link, a Yosemite Ranger on www.supertopo.com

In order to spread the use of Yosemite between its four million (give or take a few million) visitors each year the park has camping limits. Though the enforcement of these restrictions has varied over the years due to priorities, staffing, and other challenges, the actual regulations have been in effect for decades. Here’s the official wording out of the Code of Federal Regulations (Title 36, CFR 7.16 (e)(1)):

“Camping is permitted in Yosemite National Park for not more that a total of 30 days in any calendar year: Provided, however, that during the period from June 1 to September 15, inclusive, camping within Yosemite Valley is limited to not more than a total of 7 days and camping within all other portions of the park, during the same period, is limited to not more than a total of 14 days.”

There are no time limits on day use (driving/bussing/biking/hiking in for the day and leaving again to sleep).

In other words, following the letter of the law a visitor may come into the Valley on May 18th and stay until June 8th, at which point he/she may then stay in another section of the park (outside the Valley) for one more week before leaving again until the following year (thus spending one month in the park total, two weeks of which was during the summer season, and one week of which was in the Valley during that restricted season). A visitor may also spend the entire month of November (or March, or January, etc.) in the park, or he/she may live near Yosemite and drive/buss/bike/hike into the park each day as many times as they want.

So there you have it, for the record, the official stay limits in Yosemite National Park. I’ll leave it at that for the moment… as Wayne would say, “discuss.”

Cheers,
-Link