After five years of pandemic and snowpack-related closures, Yosemite National Park has reopened “glamping” campsites where visitors will have access to showers, gourmet meals and views of the park’s wild backcountry .
Aspiring campers can now enter a lottery to check out three of the five campsites available at High Sierra Camps from June through September.
The other two sites, Vogelsang and Merced Lake — respectively the highest campground and the oldest and most remote campground, established in 1916 — will remain closed throughout the 2024 season. Neither park officials nor Aramark, the park concessionaire, could not be contacted to explain why these two campsites remain closed.
According to their website, more than 13,000 visitors stay at High Sierra camps each year, and about a thousand backpackers passing through each year stop for food at the campsites.
“Glamping,” a more comfortable or glamorous version of camping, has grown in popularity over the past two decades. Visitors have the option of paying $1,403 for a guided tour of the park with a week-long stay, or paying between $172 and $185 per night to reserve a bed.
There has been controversy among some environmentalists who take a hard line against any type of wilderness development, said Jane Simpson, chairwoman of the Sierra Club’s Angeles chapter’s leadership training program. But Simpson said she was happy to hear that campgrounds are reopening to the public this year.
“The experience is phenomenal,” Simpson said, recalling his own visit to Camp High Sierra in 2015. “People are very aware of their impact.”
As an avid hiker and backpacker, Simpson is used to having to carry all of her own supplies when she visits Yosemite National Park. But the amenities of High Sierra camps allow visitors to leave their tents and cooking utensils behind, as they have running water and three meals a day prepared by professional chefs.
On their website, Aramark and the National Park Service express their commitment to environmental protection. “We take our role as managers very seriously and actively work to protect resources for generations to come,” the High Sierra Camps website states.
Jeff Jenkins, assistant professor of parks and protected areas at UC Merced’s Sierra Nevada Research Institute, said the National Park Service must strike a balance between protecting national parks and making them accessible to all.
“I remember we saw a woman traveling the route of these High Sierra camps who was in her 90s,” Jenkins recalled when her family was staying together in the High Sierra camps. “She was able to get out too.” Novice and inexperienced campers, seniors, and families may prefer to stay at High Sierra camps because of the amenities.
By designating areas where semi-permanent shelters are set up, Jenkins said, “sacrifice zones” allow a greater expanse of wilderness to remain intact. “The impact has been limited primarily to the trail corridor and those wilderness areas, those hot spots,” Jenkins said.
The urgency to mitigate human impact on the environment has forced the National Park Service to innovate by adding features such as bear-proof lockers that prevent bears from finding easy food sources near human habitations, Jenkins noted.
But the debate around these High Sierra camps is nothing new. David White, director of global sustainability and innovation at Arizona State University, describes it as the “fundamental paradox” of national parks in their balance between access and protection.
White said the social and cultural impact of visiting parks also helps shift the sustainability conversation and change personal habits to preserve the environment. For visitors, “it helps them be more aware and better understand the critical environmental issues we face, including things like climate change,” he said.
The wonder of Yosemite National Park never gets old for White, who has visited it several times. “It’s one of the most spectacular natural beauties that exists in the world,” he said. White said it is the magnitude of the natural features and the history of the native tribes who were violently forced off their lands to create Yosemite that still humbles him today.
“When you’re there, you just feel human, you feel insignificant in an important way,” White said.
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