Almost two months Yellowstone National Park– the first of America National parksand one of the most visited in the country – was closed to the public in response to that Covid-19 pandemic. But that changed on May 18th: The The National Parks Service gave Yellowstone the green light to open its gates to guests on this day, albeit with certain restrictions. As part of a gradual reopening, only the south and east entrances to the park in Wyoming were open to visitors at the time, along with a limited number of public streets and attractions.
“The park’s goal is to open safely and conservatively, ensuring we are taking the right steps to reduce the risks to our employees and visitors, and get the local economy going again,” said Cam Sholly, the superintendent of Yellowstone, in a statement.
Now, more parts of the park are slowly but surely welcoming visitors: starting June 1, the park entrances will be open again in Montana, and the first campsites will be ready for park visitors on June 15, with many of Yellowstone’s visitor facilities – such as restaurants, Souvenir shops and even the marina – open to the public until June 19.
The move takes place as other national parks are slowly welcoming visitors again. In the past few weeks, some NPS facilities have been closed – Arches, Grand Teton, Great Smoky Mountains, Joshua Treeand Zion among them – have either fully or partially reopened in accordance with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Guidelines about recreation in parks, including practicing social distancing and recommending visiting parks near their homes.
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But how do these guidelines look in practice in one of the most popular national parks in the country? Around four million people visit Yellowstone’s top attractions like Old Faithful and Mammoth Hot Springs each year, and many of these nature lovers arrive during the summer months. And people quickly returned to the park: According to YellowstoneThere were more than 4,600 visitors in attendance on Memorial Day weekend – about 150 fewer than the park on the same holiday weekend in 2019.
This gradual reopening of the park is part of Yellowstone’s three-phase plan: the first phase, which went into effect in May, opened access roads throughout the park as well as some entrances. In the second phase, which is now running, many of the park’s campsites and other amenities will be put online. The third and final phase, which has no clear timetable and will begin “if health conditions permit”, would bring the park fully online and offer hotels, ranger programs and tours again.
But even if Yellowstone is working towards a reopening, it is not yet fully occupied. “We are very concerned about the safety of employees and visitors and we want to ensure this [reopen] responsibly and don’t overwhelm the region’s resources, ”said Mike Keller, General Manager of Yellowstone National Park Lodges, operated by Xanterra Parks & Resorts.
According to Keller, there are 2,300 hotel rooms available at nine locations as well as 1,450 campsites, nine souvenir shops and 17 restaurants every day in a typical summer. But this summerthese numbers will be drastically reduced: The park will only have 550 hotel rooms available in six locations (Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, Old loyal lodge(Old Faithful Snow Lodge, Lake Yellowstone Hotel, Lake Lodge, and Canyon Lodge) while most campsites open by June 19th. “On campsites, people are outdoors, they are socially distant, they are separated from each other. ”Explains Keller. “It feels like a natural fit in this type of environment.”
In hotels and lodges, reservations are staggered in order to avoid “too many people being accommodated in a very confined space in a very short space of time”, says Keller. Visitors are encouraged to take part in outdoor activities (rather than gathering in common areas within the lodges) and adhere to social distancing rules. And as the cleaning protocols in the accommodations expand, there will be some changes in the hotel rooms themselves: Yellowstone minimizes the touch area in each room (coffee makers can be removed, for example), and housekeeping does not automatically clean the rooms during long stays unless dated Guest desired to minimize the number of people going in and out at any given time.
As for amenities, only six restaurants will be open, along with five gift shops and the Bridge Bay Marina, but things will be a bit different. Restaurants only offer take-away groceries, and staff wear personal protective equipment such as face covers and gloves. (The park also encourages visitors to wear face covering, but this is not mandatory.)
And despite the pandemic and the changes that have come with it, interest in Yellowstone remains high. “We’re not seeing any changes in our campsite reservations at all – people still want to come,” he says. And the currently available hotel rooms are already sold out. If all goes well, additional rooms may become available in July and August.
That means: “We want to be slow, we want to be careful, we want to make sure that we guarantee safety,” says Keller. “This is our top priority.”
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