Conditions described here were accurate only as of the date shown and may have changed. This is not a substitute for current official information from the agency with jurisdiction. See the full notice. Full notice.
Glacier Point Road Closes, and Containment Moves for the First Time in a Week
4,129 acres and 16 percent contained. The road shut on smoke and visibility, not flame — and you can still walk up from the Valley.
Glacier Point Road is closed. The Park Service describes it as a public safety closure driven by reduced visibility from smoke and by the need to let firefighting operations work along it, rather than by any threat to the road itself. It will reopen when conditions allow; this is not the season-ending closure that usually takes that road out in autumn.
The detail worth knowing is that Glacier Point itself is still reachable on foot. The Four Mile Trail and the Panorama Trail both remain open to hikers. That is a hard eleven miles round trip with three thousand feet of climbing on the Four Mile, in air that is currently unhealthy for sensitive groups — but the viewpoint has not been taken away, only the drive to it.
Interagency mapping puts the fire at 4,129 acres with 16 percent containment. That single point of containment is the first movement in a week, and it comes from crews connecting handlines to the Bridalveil Creek trail system and the 2017 Empire Fire footprint, and widening line around Empire Meadows and Horse Ridge. Contingency lines are being cut off Glacier Point Road itself, which is the other reason it is shut.
The closure is now substantial in area: roughly fifty square miles of the park, running east of the Wawona Road from Chinquapin down to Wawona, taking in the Chilnualna Falls and Ostrander Lake trails and everything south of Ostrander. Mariposa-Yosemite Airport is closed to general aviation traffic. Mule pack strings and helicopters are supplying crews in country with no road access.
Everything else holds. No evacuation orders or warnings at any point, Wawona not under immediate threat, all other roads open including the routes into Yosemite Valley. Smoke settles overnight in Wawona and the Valley; El Portal sees periods of unhealthy air for sensitive groups; Tuolumne Meadows is good in the morning and worse by afternoon.
If you had Glacier Point on a plan for this weekend, the drive is gone but the walk is not. Check the park's conditions page the morning you go.
Sources