So you booked Yosemite for Memorial Day weekend 2026. Bold. The first reservation-free Memorial Day since 2019, the unofficial start of summer, every Bay Area family with a long weekend and the same idea you had. Brave.
Here is the good news: you can still have a spectacular trip. Here is the short answer, the one thing almost nobody arriving this weekend will do: skip Yosemite Valley and go up to the high country instead. Both Glacier Point Road and Tioga Road are open early this year, so the best places to be on Yosemite's Memorial Day weekend are 4,000 feet above the crowded Valley floor. Pivot. Don't even think about the Valley.
I'm not being dramatic. Let me show you the shape of the problem, and then let me show you the way out, because this year the way out is better than usual.
The National Park Service dropped the day-use reservation system for the 2026 season. No cap on cars, no gate to stop you. Sounds great until you remember that the parking lots are the same size they were in 2019 and the Valley is still seven miles long. The constraint didn't disappear. It just moved from the entrance gate to the parking lot.
We already got the preview. On Saturday, May 2, 2026, a normal early-May Saturday before the season had really started, every parking space in Yosemite Valley filled by 10:59 a.m. Memorial Day weekend will be three to four times busier than that. Saturday morning is the worst of it. The Park Service knows this; it's been bracing the public for an "extremely busy weekend" and openly telling people to go anywhere but the Valley floor: Tuolumne Meadows, Wawona, the high country.
That's the rare moment where the rangers and I agree completely. So listen to us both. Go up, not in.
Most years, telling you to skip the Valley for the high country in late May would be a cruel joke, because the high country would still be under snow with the gates locked. Not this year.
It was a thin snow year, the roads got plowed early, and both of the great high routes are already open weeks ahead of schedule:
So while ten thousand people fight for a parking space 4,000 feet down in the Valley, you can be standing on a granite dome with Half Dome at eye level and almost nobody around you. That is not a consolation prize. On a holiday weekend, it's the better trip.
(One quick check before you commit: high-country roads can still close briefly in a late-season storm. Text "ynptraffic" to 333111 the morning you go, and don't trust whatever a stale web page tells you about road status.)
Turn off Highway 41 at Chinquapin and drive the road to its end. Glacier Point itself sits 3,200 feet directly above Curry Village. A paved, stroller-friendly path leads to an overlook with Half Dome at eye level, the whole Valley floor below you, and Vernal and Nevada Falls stair-stepping up the Merced canyon. It is the highest reward-per-step view in the entire park, and on an early-season weekend you may have the rail nearly to yourself.
Want to actually stretch your legs? Two of Yosemite's best short hikes share a trailhead a few miles before the end of the road:
Can't decide between them? We wrote a whole piece on how to choose, and you can link the two into one quiet loop. Don't bother with the Four Mile Trail down to the Valley this year, by the way; it's closed for 2026.
A couple of honest notes: there's no drinking water at Glacier Point and the snack stand may not be open yet, so bring a full water bottle and a sandwich. And the tour bus up here doesn't start running until mid-June, so this is a drive-yourself trip for now.
More: Glacier Point Road just opened for 2026
If Glacier Point is the easy headliner, Tioga Road is the adventure. Highway 120 climbs east through the park to Tioga Pass at 9,945 feet, and right now it's a ribbon of pavement through a high country still pulling itself out of winter. You'll see country that's a solid two months behind the green Valley you drove away from. A few stops to build a day around:
Save the big alpine hikes for your next trip. Cathedral Lakes and the other classic Tuolumne destinations are still snowbound and won't be reasonable until late June or July. Bookmark the Cathedral Lakes day hike for later.
The catch up here is self-sufficiency. The road is open, but Tuolumne Meadows itself is barely awake: the store, grill, and campground aren't open yet, there's no gas anywhere past Crane Flat, and no reliable drinking water along Tioga Road this early. Fill the tank, pack all your own food and water, and store it in a bear locker. Bring layers, including a packable insulated jacket. Sunny afternoons hit the low 60s, but nights drop to near freezing at this elevation, and an afternoon thunderstorm is possible.
More: what to expect on Tioga's opening weekend
No day-use reservations are required to enter Yosemite in 2026. That's exactly why the Valley will be slammed, and exactly why a card-in-the-glovebox high-country plan beats the crowd. Your entrance pass is $35 per vehicle, good for seven days, and the park is cashless. Bring a card. One bonus: Memorial Day Monday, May 25, is a fee-free day, so if you can swing a Monday visit, it's both the cheapest and the lightest of the three days.
And if your plans go sideways anyway (lots full, weather turns, a road closes), don't fight the park. Flex. There's almost always a great option the crowd hasn't thought of. (The Valley's marquee hike, the Mist Trail, gets weekday afternoon restrictions starting June 30, but over Memorial Day weekend it is fully open and will be mobbed.)
Skip the Valley on Saturday. Genuinely, skip it. Get up early, point the car uphill, and spend the morning on Glacier Point Road or Tioga Road while everyone else circles a full parking lot 4,000 feet below. You will not get the classic head-craning-up-at-the-falls Valley shot this trip. You'll get something better: a high granite view with room to breathe, on the one weekend of the year when that's the smartest thing you can possibly do.
Welcome to Yosemite. You made it harder than it had to be, but you can still get this right.
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