Yosemite to Reopen on Monday : Fire: There will be no unusual restrictions, although access from Tioga Road will be prohibited. Containment of the blazes is nearly complete.

With the park’s high country wildfires in retreat, Yosemite Valley will reopen to summer vacationers at noon Monday without unusual restrictions, Supt. Michael Finley announced Wednesday.

The only east-west route through Yosemite, Tioga Road, will open Friday at noon. The road, part of California 120, is a vital motoring link across the Sierra Nevada for tourists and mountain residents.

Campgrounds and services along the road will also reopen. But there will be no access down into Yosemite Valley from California 120, rangers said.

Finley said the decision to end the first summertime evacuation in the park’s history was made after workers began clearing fire-ravaged trees and boulders from along roadways scarred by flames. The fires themselves have been waning and full containment is expected by Friday.

The decisive factor in when to reopen was the safety of park roads, rangers said. Burned trees lining the entrance routes pose a threat to motorists, and boulders have also been loosened from cliffs that tower above the roads.

Crews have begun clearing scorched trees from beside the main entrance roads, California 41 from Fresno and California 140 from Mariposa. Along California 41, which enters the park near Wawona, the combination of fire and tree clearing has begun making a significant change in the landscape, once a corridor of dense pines.

Containment is expected on Friday of the last of three major fires that have devoured about 22,000 acres of forest since lightning crackled over Yosemite’s dried-out woodlands last week. The largest fire, which spread over 17,000 acres from the Merced River Canyon to Crane Flat and destroyed 66 buildings in the village of Foresta was 80% contained on Wednesday.

The fire that burned along the California 41 corridor near the Chinquapin junction held at 4,000 acres and was 60% contained. A nearly 1,000-acre fire in the Aspen Valley area was declared fully contained Wednesday.

Yosemite officials estimated that it has cost $4.6 million to fight the fires, which also have consumed some trees and brush outside the park in Stanislaus National Forest. The damage in lost structures, watershed and timber was put at $26.2 million.

The U.S. Treasury has lost $50,000 daily in campground and entrance fees--it costs $5 to drive a car into Yosemite--since the park was closed to visitors last Friday, rangers said. The financial loss is even greater to the Yosemite Park & Curry Co., which is losing several hundred thousand dollars daily at its lodgings, restaurants and shops in the park.

Finley said that campground reservations that begin on Monday or later will be honored. People with reservations that begin before the park reopening should contact Yosemite to see if they can be accommodated, he said.

John Poimoroo, vice president of Yosemite Park and Curry Co., said Wednesday that the company also will honor lodging reservations for stays that begin the day the valley reopens. The company operates the Ahwahnee Hotel, Yosemite Lodge and cabins in the valley and in the park’s high country.

Reservations for stays beginning before before Monday will be accommodated when possible, Poimoroo said. Most beds in Yosemite Valley are fully booked in summer, but, he said, cancellations have made rooms available for next week. “Normally we would not have this many rooms for sale,” Poimoroo said.

Nature has spared Yosemite new lightning storms in the past few days, giving firefighters a break. Nearly 20 fires were ignited in the park by lightning in the past week, but most remained small.

Rangers said, however, that the bigger fires proved more devastating than they might otherwise have been because of a combination of natural factors and management decisions. Four years of drought and a plague of tree-killing beetles had produced an abundance of dry fuel for a wildfire.

These fires also swept quickly down canyons where the undergrowth was extra thick because of the successful extinguishing of past fires. Had those past fires been left to burn, some of the brush that fueled this week’s blazes would already have been consumed.

Roderick reported from Los Angeles and Sahagun from Yosemite.

YOSEMITE INFORMATION

Reservations for stays that began during the park’s closure should be confirmed. Those who hold reservations beginning when the park reopens Monday will be honored.

To inquire about campground reservations: 209-372-4472

Hotel, motel and cabin lodgings: 209-252-4848

General fire information: 209-372-9254