How to Reserve a Campsite in Yosemite National Park in 2023
Last Updated: October 31, 2023
Trying to secure a campsite in Yosemite, but daunted by the competition of the reservation system? We were overwhelmed by it too. We heard dozens of stories of folks trying for years to book a campsite in Yosemite with no success. After all, these reservations in Yosemite are very competitive. But after extensively researching the process to reserve a campsite in Yosemite, we were able to secure two different campground reservations on our first try, for a total of four nights in September. Truth be told, it was not easy to book a campsite in Yosemite National Park. It takes planning ahead to successfully reserve a campground in Yosemite. But it can be done, if you get your strategy ready in advance.
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What are the lodging options when visiting Yosemite?
There are a variety of different lodging options available when visiting Yosemite, including:
- Campgrounds inside the park (booked on Recreation.gov)
- Curry Village inside Yosemite – cabins, tent cabins, and motel rooms (booked through TravelYosemite.com)
- Other lodges inside Yosemite National Park (also booked through TravelYosemite.com)
- Hotels and campgrounds outside of Yosemite National Park (booked externally, with something like Booking.com)
You’ll quickly find that booking one of the hotels inside Yosemite can be very expensive. But they offer you a comfortable place to stay, right inside the park. On the other hand, the hotels and campsites outside of Yosemite tend to be slightly more affordable. But staying outside the park means you will have to drive 45 minutes to an hour each way, to get in and out of Yosemite Valley every day. Yosemite National Park is so sprawling that there are not many hotel options within a shorter driving distance.
Campsites inside Yosemite are the most affordable option, costing only $36.00 per night. And several campsites are located right in the heart of Yosemite Valley, near Half Dome and El Capitan.
Because of the affordability and the prime location, we were determined to snag a Yosemite campsite this year.
But we knew it would not be easy, given the intense competition for the Yosemite campsites. So we planned our strategy in advance, after scouring Reddit discussions about it. And we successfully booked two campsites for a total of four nights in September!
How do you reserve a campsite in Yosemite?
- Review the different Yosemite campgrounds to select your ideal ones.
- Choose a flexible range of dates for your trip.
- Get familiar with the Recreation.gov system.
- Make a strategy for reservation day, which should include a buddy, if possible, and multiple open tabs on multiple devices.
- As soon as the clock strikes 7:00 AM, Pacific Time, immediately add all reservations to your cart, while quickly moving across your tabs.
- If you successfully added one to your cart, book the reservation within 15 minutes.
- If you were not successful on your first try, regularly refresh over the next 20 minutes to check again for newly available reservations.
Below you’ll find a full guide to reserving a site at one of the Yosemite campgrounds, with a play by play for each step.
1. Decide on Your Campground
Most people visiting Yosemite want to spend as much time as possible in Yosemite Valley. Yosemite Valley is home to the favorite sights in Yosemite such as Half Dome and El Capitan. Because Yosemite’s winding roads can take awhile to travel on, to maximize your time, you’ll likely want to snag a campsite in Yosemite Valley.
There are three campsites in Yosemite Valley that you can reserve in advance:
- Upper Pines Campground
- Lower Pines Campground
- North Pines Campground
There’s one more campground in Yosemite Valley, Camp 4, which is popular amongst climbers. However, this year, Camp 4 is bookable only one week in advance. The same strategy below will apply, you just won’t be able to book it until one week before you want to be there. In the past, Camp 4 has been first come first serve or a lottery system, so be sure to check the latest policy on the Camp 4 Profile on Recreation.gov.
2. Choose Flexible Dates for Your Yosemite Trip
To increase your chances of reserving a Yosemite Campsite, you should plan to have a flexible range of dates for your trip. Further, your best bet is to secure weekday campsites instead of weekends, as well as avoid National Holiday’s such as Labor Day and Independence Day.
Of course, life does not always allow for such flexibility. So, you can still use the rest of the strategies below to get a reservation, even if you have a very limited set of dates to travel. We’re just telling you the best way to maximize your chances of getting a reservation in Yosemite.
We knew we would be taking some time off of work for our Yosemite trip anyway, so we opted to spread out our different reservation attempts across different weekdays. We’ll explain more below, but this means that we had multiple tabs open with different dates selected in each tab.
3. Get Familiar with the Recreation.Gov System
One of the most important things you can do before Reservation Day (i.e. the 15th of the month, five months in advance of your trip) is to learn how to use Recreation.gov.
It might sound silly, since we all know how to use websites. It’s 2023, for goodness’ sake! But on Reservation Day, every second matters. And you want to know on this site exactly how to add a reservation to your cart and check out.
If you’ve never booked a campsite on Recreation.gov before, you’ll need to create a Recreation.gov account first. Next, you’ll want to walk through the steps of booking a campsite, just as a practice.
If you open one of the Yosemite National Park campgrounds, you’ll see that all the campsites are either grayed out with an “R” for Reserved, or they say “NR” for Not Released. This is because, as mentioned above, most Yosemite campgrounds open up reservations 5 months beforehand, on the 15th of every month.
Since you can’t practice adding any Yosemite campsites to your cart, you should at least walk through the steps of booking any random campsite on Recreation.gov. (For example, practice by pretending to book a campsite at Goldledge Campground, which is NOT in Yosemite.) You’ll see that you can select blue boxes with an “A” inside, which represent an available campsite.
Then once you hit Add to Cart, you’ll be redirected to the Cart page. You can get all the way to the final check out page without submitting any kind of payment.
The most important part of the website to familiarize yourself with is the reservation page above. You need to have your dates selected and be ready to click “Add to Cart” as soon as the clock strikes 7:00 AM PT on Reservation Day. As we discuss below, once you’ve got a reservation safely in your cart, you’ll have 15 minutes to check out, so you won’t have to rush as much.
4. Make a Strategy for Reservation Day
The goal on Reservation Day is to have as many reservations ready to click “Add to Cart” for as possible, right when the clock strikes 7:00 AM PT.
To do this, you’ll ideally want to have multiple tabs open on multiple devices. If you can have a friend help you, even better. With two people you double your chances!
An hour before reservations open, the campsite reservations on Recreation.gov will change from “NR” to “A” for available. Once they show up as “A,” you can select campsites, but you can’t add anything to cart yet. Not until 7:00 AM PT.
Around 30-15 minutes before 7:00 AM PT, I recommend setting up multiple tabs. In each tab, select different dates and/or different campsites across different Yosemite campgrounds (e.g. Upper Pines, Lower Pines, and North Pines).
Then, and this is my best advice, place your mouse over the Add to Cart button, and practice quickly switching tabs without moving your mouse, by using Command + T on Mac or Ctrl + T on PC.
This strategy allows you to click Add to Cart as many times as possible in just a few seconds. It may sound over the top, but it worked for us!
We also had Time.gov open on a different device while we were waiting for 7:00 AM. Time.gov provides the exact time used by the Recreation.gov website, and your laptop could be half a second off. Time.gov also allows you to watch the seconds count down to 7:00 AM, so you’re ready!
5. At Exactly 7:00 AM PT, Click "Add to Cart" for Multiple Yosemite Reservations
As soon as you see the clock strike 7:00:00 AM PT, it’s show time.
You need to immediately start clicking Add to Cart, Command + T, Add to Cart, Command + T, and on and on. Don’t bother waiting to see if the reservation went through. Just. Keep. Clicking.
Once you have clicked Add to Cart on all your open tabs with potential reservations, then you can go back and check which ones went through.
There are two options of what could happen when you click Add to Cart. First, you could get an error message that the site is too busy. This means that reservation didn’t go through. But second, your page could be redirected to the cart. This means SUCCESS!! You have a reservation in your cart, and it is YOURS for the next 15 minutes!
6. Book the Reservation in Your Cart Within 15 Minutes
After you’ve reviewed all your open tabs and identified the successful ones, you have 15 minutes to check out and complete your reservation.
If you are lucky enough to get multiple successful reservations in your cart, you can choose between the Yosemite reservations you have pending. All our research showed that Upper Pines, Lower Pines, and North Pines are all comparable in quality, so you can’t go wrong with any choice!
7. If Unsuccessful at 7:00 AM PT, Try Again Over the Next 15-20 Minutes.
If you were not successful in booking a Yosemite campsite reservation right at 7:00 AM PT, don’t worry. All hope is not lost.
Because many people try to click multiple reservations right at 7:00 AM PT, inevitably some people forfeit some reservations when they realize they have two. Or their cart expires after 15 minutes and they forfeit the reservation then. So over the 15 to 20 minutes after 7:00 AM, many sites come available again.
We recommend you keep refreshing periodically for 15-20 minutes after 7:00 AM to see if any Yosemite campsite reservations become available!
Bottom Line: You CAN Book a Yosemite Campsite
So is it possible to get a Yosemite campsite reservation? Yes. Is it easy? No.
We thought there was no chance at all we would ever get a Yosemite campsite reservation. But we did some digging beforehand, practiced our strategy the morning of, and we were successful! And if you’re interested in learning more about what we did on our camping trip in Yosemite, check out our 3-day Yosemite itinerary. Also check out these mistakes to avoid when visiting Yosemite to make sure you’re prepared for the best trip!
There is no reason why you can’t be successful getting a Yosemite campsite just like us. Just get your plan in place, practice, and you’re ready to go! Good luck, and happy camping. 