STATE & NATION TRAVEL · news
Yosemite's Dome Fire reaches 86% containment, but backcountry closures remain
By Bob LePage · Published October 13, 2026
Fire crews report no perimeter change for several days and improving smoke conditions. Visitors still need to avoid the fire footprint and follow restrictions below 8,000 feet.
Official announcement: National Park Service · October 13, 2026
The Dome Fire was 86% contained on the morning of October 13, according to Yosemite National Park. The fire's perimeter had not changed for several days, and activity was limited mainly to pockets of heat inside the burned area. Yosemite remained broadly open, but the park did not lift the trail closures within the active fire footprint.
Crews are now shifting from perimeter work toward patrol, equipment removal and repair of ground disturbed during suppression. Firefighters, mule trains and helicopters are taking hose and other gear out of remote wilderness, while repair work is intended to reduce erosion and make handlines fit the surrounding terrain more closely.
The incident management team is scheduled to return command to Yosemite National Park on October 15. That transfer is a milestone in the response, not a reopening order for every affected trail. The October 13 outlook anticipated mostly good smoke conditions around Yosemite, with brief moderate periods possible in Yosemite Valley, but conditions can change after the forecast window.
What Travelers Need to Know
Check the official Dome Fire closure map on the day of travel. Alder Creek Trail is open only north to the Deer Camp Trailhead, and Chilnualna Falls Trail is open from its trailhead east to Chilnualna Fall and Crescent Lake. Buena Vista Trail and all trails inside the active fire footprint remain closed, including south- and eastbound routes reached from Glacier Point Road. Do not treat the park's general operating status as confirmation that a particular backcountry route is open.
Fire restrictions remain in effect below 8,000 feet. Wood and charcoal fires are limited to the exceptions listed on Yosemite's official restrictions page, and smoking is allowed only in specified places. Check current conditions and the linked AirNow fire-and-smoke map before departure, especially if anyone in the group is sensitive to smoke. Improving smoke does not eliminate the need to verify conditions on the day of travel.
About the Location
The fire began near Yosemite's southern high country, about a quarter-mile north of Chilnualna Falls and northeast of Wawona. Wawona is a mid-elevation basin near the park's South Entrance. The National Park Service describes it as a long-used Indigenous landscape that later became a settlement and a principal route for nineteenth-century travel into Yosemite Valley; it was added to Yosemite National Park in 1932.
That setting explains why the remaining closures matter even while most of Yosemite is operating normally. Trails around Chilnualna Falls, Alder Creek and the country south and east of Glacier Point Road lead away from developed roads into a much larger wilderness landscape. Yosemite, first protected in 1864, covers nearly 1,200 square miles of granite cliffs, valleys, meadows, giant sequoias and wilderness in California's Sierra Nevada.