A wildfire burning across the southwest corner of Yosemite National Park cast the vacation plans for thousands of park visitors into uncertainty during the peak of summer tourism.
The blaze closed one park entrance and sent very unhealthy smoke drifts north into Yosemite Valley, blotting out its famous granite features like Half Dome and El Capitan.
Social media was abuzz with posts from prospective visitors wondering what to do.
“We’re getting a lot of questions,” said Rhonda Salisbury, CEO of Visit Yosemite Madera County.
Air quality east of the valley along Highway 395 appeared clear and healthy on Tuesday morning, but the smoke was blowing north from the area near Mariposa Grove, which is in the southern part of the park. The smoke drifted northward all the way to the Lake Tahoe area, where people were beginning to worry about outdoor plans for the weekend.
Some hotels in Madera and Mariposa counties near the fire zone were getting cancellations, tourism officials in those areas said. Many visitors were either rebooking their trips for later in the year or were moving to hotels further from the fire and smoke.
“We try not to say, ‘Come anyway,’ when it’s smoky,” Salisbury said. “When it’s not good for people to be there, we don’t want to invite them up.”
Highway 41, the popular route into Yosemite’s southern entrance at Wawona from Fresno, was closed in the area of the fire as hundreds of firefighters battled the blaze. Incoming park visitors were being rerouted along Highway 49 to Highway 140 via Mariposa, and traffic in the region was slow-going, tourism officials said.
Most businesses in the gateway communities along Yosemite’s western edge remained open. Bu the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad, a popular tourist attraction that takes riders into the mountains closed Monday “due to excessive smoke.”
Whether the park was receiving an abnormal number of day-use cancellations was unclear. Even with the day-use reservation system, which is now in its third year, Yosemite can receive upwards of 10,000 visitors per day during the busy season between June and August.
Yosemite has not escaped the wildfires plaguing California in recent years.
Two years ago, the park closed down for a week due to heavy smoke that lingered in Yosemite Valley — the first such closure in the park’s 130-year history. Parts of the park were also closed in 2018 due to the Ferguson Fire and in 2013 because of the Rim Fire.
The convergence of peak tourism and high wildfire threat should send a message to prospective Yosemite visitors, said Jonathan Farrington, Mariposa County Tourism Bureau CEO and executive director.
“If you have the option to travel outside the summer, the more sustainable thing to do would be not to visit during the summer, from mid-June to mid-August,” Farrington said. “That’s when it’s busy. That’s when the Sierra Nevada is hot and not as pleasant.”
Visitors contemplating whether to make the journey to Yosemite this week or weekend are being urged to check the fire danger in the region, monitor smoke levels and air quality, and keep an open mind about what parts of the park are most appropriate to visit.
Gregory Thomas is The Chronicle’s editor of lifestyle & outdoors. Email: gthomas@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @GregRThomas
