Fastest route to Yosemite Park from Sacramento closes for repairs. When will it reopen?
A key road to Yosemite National Park will be closed well into the summer for repairs, cutting access to Yosemite Valley’s popular waterfalls and cliffs.
Big Oak Flat Road, a continuation of Highway 120 west into Yosemite, is closed from just inside the park’s boundary to Merced Grove until “possibly” July, the U.S. National Park Service wrote in a statement. Repairs to the road’s 200-foot-long, 4-inch deep crack are scheduled to begin in mid-May.
“It is not safe to open the road even to limited traffic, Yosemite National Park wrote on its Facebook page “and doing so would likely lead to additional road failure.”
The road’s surface has shifted between 2 inches and 3 inches both vertically and horizontally and continues to move. The embankment, built to hold back water and raise the road, settled 15 feet downslope and water is flowing through it.
Yosemite National Park will work alongside the Federal Highway Administration to complete the repairs, officials said.
Not only is the road the quickest and most scenic route to Yosemite from points north, including Sacramento, but it winds travelers right into the heart of the park.
The earliest Big Oak Flat Road could reopen is in mid-June, according to the statement, which would be enough time to travel to Yosemite Valley to catch a few waterfalls before they completely dry out in August.
Visitors can still reach Yosemite National Park’s Hodgen Meadow and Hetch Hetchy through Highway 120. But for those looking for the main attractions, namely Yosemite Valley, motorists should use Highway 140 through Merced and Mariposa via Highway 99 — the difference in drive times isn’t significantly different.
Once inside the park, motorists can travel from Yosemite Valley up to Big Oak Flat Road to reach the park’s Tuolumne and Merced Groves of Giant Sequoias.
Big Oak Flat Road closed
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