Tuesday marked the annual closing of Yosemite National Park’s two highest elevation roads for the winter. The first heavy snowfall marks the annual closing of Glacier Point ( )Road, the ten-mile road from Yosemite’s ski resort, Badger Pass, up to the overlook at Glacier Point, and Tioga Road, which is an extension of Highway 120, between Lee Vining and Manteca, the exclusive west-east route through Yosemite National Park. Snowfall makes the two roads impassable and always prompts their closings for the winter, though this year’s warmer temperatures allowed the roads to stay opened until December 16th, the latest closing in twenty eight years. The roads open up again in the late spring after the snow melts, usually in May.
Approaching an elevation of just under ten thousand feet, Tioga Road is the highest California highway. This pass began as a trail used by the Miwok Indians and then turned into a mining road in the late nineteenth century when silver was mined in the area, eventually becoming a toll road that was privately owned. The Modesto Chamber of Commerce, the Sierra Club, and the first director of the National Park Service, pooled their resources to buy the road and then donated it in order to facilitate tourism through Yosemite National Park.
Yosemite National Park is opened 365 days of the year. Tioga Road and Glacier Point Road are the only two roads in the park that stay closed through the winter, with the other roads throughout Yosemite being maintained and cleared of snow. Though Yosemite’s other roads are maintained throughout the winter, visitors to Yosemite National Park during the winter season are required to either arrive in four-wheel drive vehicles, or carry tire chains. While the announcement marks a closing in one regard, it marks an opening in another, as the first big snow always facilitates the opening of the Badger Pass Ski Area, which will have its first opening weekend this Friday.
