Tent & Tree
Destinations / Yosemite
Lower Pines Campground
Riverside sites on the Merced with Half Dome views. One of the hardest reservations in the country.
Getting a site here
- Open (2026, tentative)
- Apr 21 – Oct 19
- Elevation
- 4,000 ft
- Sites
- 74
- Fee
- $36/night
- Water
- Tap
- RV / trailer max
- 40 ft / 35 ft
- Reservations
- 5 months ahead on the 15th
From the National Park Service's campground table, checked 2026-09-23. Six of the Valley's eight big-rig sites (40 ft RV / 35 ft trailer) are here.
When does your date go on sale at Lower Pines? The Yosemite release calendar →
Popular weekends here book up soon after they open on Recreation.gov. After that, the realistic path is cancellations.
Cancellations we've caught here
In the last 30 days, 195 booked site-nights at Lower Pines came back up (11 of them Friday or Saturday nights). Of the 195 that someone rebooked, at least half were gone within 66 minutes, and 90 within an hour.
Latest:
- Sun Oct 18 · Site 019 · opened Sun 10:36 AM PT, rebooked within 40 min
- Sun Oct 18 · Site 007 · opened Sun 10:15 AM PT, rebooked within 73 min
- Sat Oct 17 · Site 001 · opened Sat 3:54 PM PT, rebooked within 37 min
- Sat Oct 17 · Site 060 · opened Sat 1:54 PM PT, rebooked within 25 min
- Fri Oct 16 · Site 032 · opened Fri 5:51 PM PT, rebooked within 14 min
- Sun Oct 18 · Site 032 · opened Fri 11:30 AM PT, rebooked within 24 min
From our own checks of every site here, lately about every 15 minutes for nights this month and next, less often further out. A site that opens and is rebooked between two checks isn't counted, so these are floors, and each time is a bound. Cancellations at every campground we log →
Lower Pines Campground cancellation policy
Cancel more than 48 hours before your arrival date and you lose only the $10 fee; inside 48 hours you also lose the first night. The campground's own rule, as Recreation.gov publishes it:
Cancellations more than 48 hours in advance of arrival date only incur a $10 transaction fee. Within 48 hours, $10 and the first night's fee are charged (Exception: 1 night reservations do not incur an additional $10 fee, but do not receive a refund). No-shows will be assessed a $20 service fee along with the loss of the first night's fee.
From Lower Pines's Recreation.gov page, read Sep 30, 2026. How cancellations work, and how far ahead the cancelled nights are →
Set an alert for your dates and we check every site in Lower Pines every 30 seconds. When one opens, you get an email with a direct link to the site and night — you book it yourself, in your own Recreation.gov account.
Read before you book
- How Recreation.gov cancellations actually work (and when sold-out sites open up) — Sold out on Recreation.gov rarely means sold out for good. The fee rules decide when people cancel, and knowing them tells you when to look.