Glacier Point Road is open for the 2026 season. The Park Service plowed it through the back end of winter, the gate at Chinquapin came up after seven months of closure, and cars are again climbing the seventeen miles to a viewpoint at 7,200 feet that puts you at eye level with Half Dome.
If you have been waiting for this, here is what to know about the road in the first weeks of the season. Not the road in general. Not the road in July. The road now, in this snowpack year, with what is and is not actually working at the top.
The road is open. The viewpoint is open. The vault toilets are open. The amphitheater is there.
Drinking water is not yet available at Glacier Point. Bring your own. A liter per person at the absolute minimum if you are walking out to Sentinel Dome or Taft Point, more if it is warm. The Glacier Point gift shop and snack stand are seasonal and may not be open in the first weeks. Check the Park Service's conditions page the night before you drive up. Do not assume you can buy a sandwich at the top.
The trailheads accessible from the road include Sentinel Dome and Taft Point (the two most-walked short hikes off Glacier Point Road), Pohono (the long rim trail), the top of the Panorama Trail, the top of the Four Mile Trail, Mono Meadow, and the Bridalveil Creek area. Most of these will have snow on the shaded north faces and patchy slush in the trees through May. Trekking poles are not optional this time of year if you are going beyond the immediate viewpoint. Microspikes are useful on the first half mile of any trail off the road that climbs.
A note worth saying plainly: the Park Service has flagged intermittent closures of the Panorama Trail between Nevada Fall and the Illilouette Creek junction for ongoing rockfall remediation. If your plan was to descend Panorama to the Mist Trail, check the conditions page before you start down. The Mist Trail itself has its own current closure (more on that elsewhere on the site).
The drive up Glacier Point Road in May is one of the most overlooked drives in the park, partly because most visitors are not yet thinking about it and partly because the road conditions in the first few weeks tend to filter casual drivers. The first half climbs through ponderosa pine and incense cedar with patches of black oak still leafing out. Around 6,500 feet you are in white fir country, and by the time you cross Bridalveil Creek the conifers have shifted to red fir and lodgepole. There will be snow in the woods. There will be snow in the meadows. There may be running water across the road at culvert sections where the meltwater is finding its early routes.
The road is paved, and the Park Service plows it well, but the corners are tight, the sun and shadow alternate quickly, and the asphalt at 6,000 feet on a sunny May morning is doing things differently than the asphalt in the Valley. Drive it like you have all day.
Traffic in these first weeks will be heavier than the off-season but lighter than what July will bring. The early hour helps. So does the fact that many visitors planning a Yosemite trip have not yet realized Glacier Point is back. The first stretch after the opening is, in my experience, the most pleasant time to drive this road. The locals know. The internet has not caught up yet.
Pick one of two plans, depending on what you want.
The slow plan. Drive up for sunrise. In mid-May, that is somewhere around 5:55 a.m., so leave the Valley by 4:45. Park at Glacier Point itself. Walk the paved 0.3 miles out to the overlook in the pre-light. Watch the light hit the high peaks east of the Valley before it hits the Valley floor. Half Dome catches it first. Then the Clark Range. Then, finally, the inner Valley and the north walls. There is no faster way to learn how the light works in Yosemite than to watch it land in this order, from this vantage. Bring a thermos. Bring layers (it can be in the thirties at the rim even in May). Plan to stay an hour after sunrise, which is when most of the people who came up will leave and you will have the railing to yourself for ten minutes.
The hike plan. Drive up after breakfast, park at the Sentinel Dome and Taft Point trailhead (about a mile and a half before Glacier Point itself). Hike Sentinel first, Taft second, eat lunch on the rim somewhere quiet, then drive the last bit of road and walk out to Glacier Point with your legs already loose. The total walking is around five miles with modest elevation gain, and the experience of standing on Sentinel's bare granite cap (which is exfoliated granodiorite, not bare granite the way most people use the word) and then standing inches from the void at Taft is a study in what 2,500 feet of vertical can mean. There is a piece on the site about how to choose between those two hikes if you only have time for one.
If you are bringing kids, or visitors who can't hike, there is a third plan: Glacier Point itself only. The walk to the overlook is paved, short, and stroller-friendly. The view is the highest-bang-per-step view in the park. Eat your sandwiches on the wall, count peregrines, and drive back down. That is a complete day.
Two things. The first is the silence. Glacier Point in May is quieter than Glacier Point in July by an order of magnitude. The marmots are still mostly in their winter dens. The Clark's nutcrackers are loud but not constant. The wind, when it comes, comes in waves rather than all afternoon. Stand still for a minute and you will hear the Merced River from 3,000 feet down, sometimes the falls, almost always the wind moving through the lodgepoles behind you.
The second is the snow. Looking east from Glacier Point you see the Cathedral Range, Mount Hoffman, Mount Clark, and behind them the high peaks of the Clark Range. Even in this thin snowpack year (more on that later this week), the high country still looks like winter from up here. Tioga Road is still closed. The high lakes are still frozen. The Sentinel Range above Tenaya Canyon will hold snow for another six weeks. You are looking at country that is two months behind the Valley you just drove out of.
That contrast is the whole pitch for an early-season Glacier Point trip. From this one parking lot you can see both the Yosemite that is already in spring and the Yosemite that is still in winter. There are not many vantages in the country where you can hold both seasons in a single look.
A pair of binoculars. Glacier Point is one of the best peregrine falcon viewpoints in California. The pair that nests below Glacier Point's east face usually has eggs by mid-May and chicks by late June. From the overlook you cannot see them, but you can sometimes hear them and almost always spot the adults working the cliff face for swifts. The white-throated swifts themselves, riding the air pouring up the south face, are worth ten minutes of focused attention.
Also: a wind layer. The temperature spread between the Valley and the rim on a clear May day can be twenty degrees. People underestimate this every year.
The first weeks of the season are one of the few times in the year when Glacier Point feels like a place you discovered rather than a place everyone has already been to. The road will be dirty. The amenities will be skeletal. You may not be able to buy water. The Panorama Trail may be partly closed. The Mist Trail, if you were planning to combine, is currently closed.
Go anyway. Drive up early. Bring your own water. Walk the short trails before the lot fills. Stand on the overlook for longer than you think you should. Then leave by lunch. The rest of the season will fill this place up. The first few weeks never quite do.
The door is open. Walk through it.