Loading…
Every number below comes from the live Upper Pines, North Pines, Lower Pines, Wawona, and Hodgdon Meadow pages on this site, which track these five recreation.gov campgrounds for cancellations.
Yosemite books on Recreation.gov through two different release systems. The three Yosemite Valley campgrounds, Upper Pines (235 sites), North Pines (81), and Lower Pines (74), release reservations in monthly batches at 7 a.m. Pacific (10 a.m. Eastern) on the 15th of the prior month. Wawona (96 sites) and Hodgdon Meadow (105 sites) use a rolling six-month window where a new date opens every day at 10 a.m. Eastern, exactly six months out. Create your Recreation.gov account before release day, be logged in when your window opens, and if everything shows sold out, cancellations reappear continuously because campers get a full refund minus $10 for cancelling more than 14 days out.
Yosemite National Park has more campgrounds than this, but these are the five recreation.gov campgrounds with live reservation inventory that Camp.land watches, 591 sites combined. All five are nonelectric.
| Campground | Where | Sites | Booking window |
|---|---|---|---|
| Upper Pines | Yosemite Valley, near Curry Village | 235 | Monthly batch: 7 a.m. Pacific on the 15th |
| North Pines | Yosemite Valley, near the stables | 81 | Monthly batch: 7 a.m. Pacific on the 15th |
| Lower Pines | Yosemite Valley, along the Merced River | 74 | Monthly batch: 7 a.m. Pacific on the 15th |
| Wawona | South entrance, near Oakhurst | 96 | Rolling: each date opens 6 months out, daily at 10 a.m. Eastern |
| Hodgdon Meadow | Big Oak Flat entrance, west side | 105 | Rolling: each date opens 6 months out, daily at 10 a.m. Eastern |
This is the single most important thing to understand about booking Yosemite. The three Valley campgrounds do not use the rolling six-month window most national park campgrounds use. They release reservations in monthly batches: the next month’s inventory becomes available at 7 a.m. Pacific (10 a.m. Eastern) on the 15th of the prior month. If you want a June site, you compete on May 15.
Wawona and Hodgdon Meadow work the opposite way. They use a rolling window where each individual date opens exactly six months out, one new date per day at 10 a.m. Eastern (7 a.m. Pacific). If today is December 20, the date that just opened is June 20 at both campgrounds.
Have your Recreation.gov account created and verified ahead of time, with payment details saved. On the Valley’s monthly release days, popular summer weekends are typically claimed within minutes, so being logged in and ready at exactly 7 a.m. Pacific matters. For the Wawona and Hodgdon rolling windows the same applies at 10 a.m. Eastern each morning, though competition for any single date is usually lighter than a Valley batch drop since demand spreads across days instead of piling onto one minute.
Pick your target order in advance. Upper Pines carries the biggest pool at 235 sites and stays open all year, which makes it both the most competitive and the most likely to have something left in a batch. Hodgdon Meadow’s lower elevation keeps it accessible into the colder months when higher campgrounds close, but check current seasonal status before counting on it.
When your window opens, search your dates, move fast, and confirm. Do not overthink site selection during a Valley batch drop; landing any reservable site beats losing the whole campground while you compare spots. Every one of the five campgrounds is dry camping regardless of which site you get, and bear boxes at every site are mandatory for all food and scented items.
Missing a release does not end the trip. Recreation.gov charges only a $10 cancellation fee on top of a full refund when campers cancel more than 14 days out, which makes cancelling cheap, so cancelled Yosemite dates post back to Recreation.gov continuously in the weeks before popular dates rather than arriving in one burst. Inside 14 days the first night’s fee is forfeited, so late cancellations thin out.
The problem is timing: an opening can appear at any hour and vanish in minutes. Refreshing Recreation.gov by hand for weeks is not realistic. Camp.land scans all five Yosemite campgrounds about every 30 minutes and emails you the moment a site opens for your dates, so you can grab it while it is still there. Email alerts only, no texts to miss. The first alert is free.
Upper Pines Campground (Yosemite National Park) fills up fast — lock in a cabin nearby
Cabins and vacation rentals in Mariposa and El Portal are worth booking as a backup if the campground is full.
See cabins & rentals near Upper Pines Campground (Yosemite National Park) →We may earn a commission from bookings, at no extra cost to you.
Want the booking playbook?
Yosemite books on Recreation.gov through two different release systems. The three Yosemite Valley campgrounds, Upper Pines (235 sites), North Pines (81), and Lower Pines (74), release reservations in monthly batches at 7 a.m. Pacific (10 a.m. Eastern) on the 15th of the prior month. Wawona (96 sites) and Hodgdon Meadow (105 sites) use a rolling six-month window where a new date opens every day at 10 a.m. Eastern, exactly six months out. Create your Recreation.gov account before release day, be logged in when your window opens, and if everything shows sold out, cancellations reappear continuously because campers get a full refund minus $10 for cancelling more than 14 days out.
It depends on the campground. Upper, Lower, and North Pines in Yosemite Valley release reservations in monthly batches: the next month’s inventory drops at 7 a.m. Pacific (10 a.m. Eastern) on the 15th of the preceding month, so August dates come out on July 15. Wawona and Hodgdon Meadow book on a rolling six-month window instead: a new date opens every day at 10 a.m. Eastern (7 a.m. Pacific), exactly six months out.
The five recreation.gov Yosemite campgrounds Camp.land watches are Upper Pines (235 sites, the largest, open year-round), North Pines (81), Lower Pines (74), Wawona (96) near the park’s south entrance, and Hodgdon Meadow (105) by the Big Oak Flat entrance on the west side. That is 591 sites total, and none of them offer hookups, so plan for dry camping wherever you land.
Cancellations post back to Recreation.gov continuously. Cancelling more than 14 days out costs a camper only a $10 fee on top of a full refund, so people cancel freely and dates reappear without warning, any night of the week. Camp.land scans these five campgrounds about every 30 minutes and emails you the moment a site opens for your dates. The first alert is free.