Maybe you’ve notice or maybe you haven’t but visitation to the Park fell by 20% for 2006 as compared to 10 years ago giving visitors more breathing room and freedom to enjoy the natural beauty of the park.
MercuryNews.com: “Fewer people visited Yosemite last year than at any time in the past 16 years, according to park attendance statistics made public Monday. The trend has been under way for a decade — and nobody knows exactly why, although park officials point to busy families, video games and a series of natural disasters.
With 3.36 million visitors in 2006, Yosemite drew nearly 20 percent fewer people than its peak in attendance 10 years ago, despite the state adding 5 million people — equivalent to the populations of Chicago and Houston — in that span.
“The traffic is less. I’m not seeing the backups that we used to see,” said Scott Gediman, a ranger who has worked in Yosemite since 1996. “You don’t see crowds of people as much.”
Key weekends such as Memorial Day, Labor Day and the Fourth of July remain busy. But, increasingly, very crowded days are the exception. A few minutes’ walk up a trail from Yosemite Valley can mean solitude.
“You can go out on an August day on a Tuesday afternoon and it is more peaceful and quiet now, which is wonderful,” Gediman said. “But we’d like people, if they haven’t been here in a couple of years, to come back.”