Yosemite Opens Again to Long Lines of Visitors

Every other summer, Jose Romo and 40 of his closest friends and family set up camp in Yosemite Valley. “It’s our favorite corner of the world,” Romo said Monday as he looked down at the valley from the Tunnel View overlook, one of the most popular spots for viewing the park’s scenery.

It’s a love affair shared by many Americans, and for them--the many thousands who cherish Yosemite and its spectacular glacial valley--Romo had good news after informally inspecting the fire damage to the park .

“It was kind of heartbreaking to see the charred woods as we came up, but it’s better than we thought,” said Romo, who drove to Yosemite on Monday from Rowland Heights.

He was among the first wave of visitors to pass through the gates as Yosemite Valley reopened for business after a 10-day hiatus from tour buses and crowds. The fires that forced the valley’s evacuation are all but out now, their smoke just a light haze in the morning sky.

Within an hour of the 10:30 a.m. opening--moved up from noon due to long lines at the two main gates--squirrels and picnickers were again doing battle. After being denied picnic scraps for 10 days, squirrels all over the valley were pestering visitors for handouts. Kevin La, a resident of Garden Grove, came back from pitching his tent at the Lower River campground to find four squirrels in his car.

Wildlife may be more aggressive than usual for a few days, park naturalists say, but otherwise the only differences that visitors will see from the way Yosemite used to be is in the fire areas along roads leading into the valley. Burned trees there have been felled to clear hazards, the naturalists explained.

At Lower River campground, one of the first arrivals Monday was Khosrow Sarai, who correctly guessed that he would not need a reservation because the fires forced many vacationers to make other plans.

“I knew because of the fire there would be plenty of places,” said Sarai, who had the Merced River nearly to himself as he fished with his two sons. “We got a nice (campsite) by the water too.’

Sarai said the fire damage he saw along California 41, the worst-hit area, was not as severe as he feared.

“It took away some of the scenery, but it’s nature--nature started it and nature will bring (the forest) back.”

The fires were started two weeks ago by an intense lightning storm that squatted for a day over the west flank of the Sierra Nevada. A few smaller fires still burn in Yosemite, but most of the 3,100 firefighters here a week ago have left.

There was no lightning Monday, but visitors did experience the unpredictable Sierra weather, which a day earlier had produced showers in the valley and three inches of snow at Tuolumne Meadows in the park’s high country. Skies were blue Monday morning, but by midafternoon gray clouds blocked the sun and temperatures plunged into the 60s.

Chief naturalist Len McKenzie said the park was not as busy Monday as might be expected on a typical summer day, but he said rooms and campsites should be full again by midweek. “Park operations seem to be getting back to normal,” he said.

At the Ahwahnee Hotel, where nicely appointed rooms with wet bars and VCRs go for as much as $238 a night, the beds had been made and waiting for guests for several days. Bellhop Steve Harding said he was eager to get back to normal. “I can use the tips after 11 days off,” Harding said.

The dining room, famed for its cathedral ceiling and views of the cliffs, reopened at noon to about a dozen people with a menu that included curry zucchini soup and breaded sea bass. Guests arriving in the lobby were greeted by pianist Dudley Kendall.

“It’s a nice way to welcome people back,” said Kendall, who gets to live in the valley in return for playing piano five nights a week in the hotel dining room.

The first guests to check in, Ann and Joe Winstead, drove into the Sierra from Los Gatos on Sunday night to beat the rush and were in line at the park’s Arch Rock gate by 8:30 a.m. They unloaded a small refrigerator and enough books and provisions to last a week in one of the Ahwahnee’s private cottages.

“We like the cottages because they’re a little bigger than the rooms and the deer come right up to your door,” said Ann Winstead. Unlike other guests, who reserved rooms a year ago only to lose the booking because of fire, the Winsteads’ stay had been scheduled to begin Monday. “We planned this pretty well,” she said.

More than 20 Ahwahnee rooms remained unbooked by midafternoon, but manager Curt Abramson said they would probably be filled Monday night. “We usually get some walk-in traffic,” he said.

At Tunnel View, which was deserted at sunset on Sunday, tour buses idled at noon Monday and 20 cameras were trained on the granite cliffs that form Yosemite Valley, a box canyon 3,000 feet deep that was formed by long-ago glaciers.

“We came all the way and we were afraid we wouldn’t get to see it,” said Diane Arnold, who traveled from Greensboro, N.C.

On the valley floor, which was abandoned by all but park workers and firefighters in the early-morning evacuation Aug. 10, rangers set up a radar gun to clock and cite speeders.

“People are racing around trying to see everything before everyone else does,” one ranger said.