This Yosemite road disappears under snow for half the year, and summer is your only shot at it
Yosemite Valley is open 365 days a year. Tuolumne Meadows isn’t — this stretch of high country buries itself in snow every winter, and the only road in shuts down for roughly half the year. Right now, while Tioga Road is clear, is basically your whole window.
Psst — we made you a West Coast Adventure Map. Nearly 1,900 of our favorite spots, already pinned, ready to load into Google Maps in two clicks — grab it here.
This year the road reopened to vehicles on May 15, after crews spent about a month digging out drifts left over from winter. It’ll stay open into fall, then close again — sometimes as late as November, sometimes earlier if an early storm rolls through. Even the park can’t give you an exact closing date until it actually happens.
Once you’re through the gate, the change is immediate. Yosemite Valley’s granite walls give way to wide open meadow, ringed by bare granite domes and cut through by a river that’s down to a trickle by late summer. Tuolumne Meadows sits around 8,600 feet, so the air is thinner, the light is sharper, and it runs noticeably cooler than the Valley floor.
Two hikes, two effort levels
If you’ve already worked through Yosemite Valley’s best-known trails, this is where the crowds thin out and the scenery gets stranger — sharper peaks, alpine lakes, granite that looks almost sanded smooth.
Lembert Dome is the easy win: 1.9 miles round trip with about 700 feet of climbing, close to an hour and a half if you’re not rushing. The final stretch is a bare granite scramble rather than a marked trail, so real grip on your shoes matters here. The payoff is a 360-degree view over the whole meadow.
Cathedral Lakes asks more of you: 9.6 miles round trip with about 1,650 feet of elevation gain, closer to four and a half hours out and back. The climb up front is the hard part — once it eases off, you’re walking a granite bench with Cathedral Peak on one side and a lake still enough to mirror it on the other.
📍 GET THE ULTIMATE CALIFORNIA MAP 🗺️
Get our curated list of the best adventures and things to do north of LA loaded onto your maps with just two clicks!
✅ Waterfalls ✅ Hikes ✅ Viewpoints
✅ National Parks ✅ 1400+ Pins
Permits, passes, and timing it right
Neither hike needs a wilderness permit — that’s only required if you’re sleeping out overnight. Turn either one into a backpacking trip and you’ll need a reservation instead: 60% of each trailhead’s daily quota opens 24 weeks out, and the rest releases seven days ahead.
Yosemite charges a park entrance fee, and an America the Beautiful Pass covers it along with every other national park you’ll hit this year.
Once that road closes for the season, none of this is reachable again until next summer opens it back up. Worth building a trip around while the gate’s still open, don’t you think?
Trip tips: grab a rental car to get out here, lock in your hotel before Yosemite’s summer rooms disappear, or skip both and book a camper van instead.
Rules and fees change — always confirm current requirements before you go.
