The National Park Service has announced that, as of 11/12/98, Tioga Pass (120 East from 395 through Yosemite’s Tuolumne Meadows) is closed for the season … as is Glacier Point Road from Highway 41 to Glacier Point.
Additionally, yosemitegold.com has learned exclusively about the closing of Trans-Sierra Highways 108 (Sonora Pass) & 4 (Ebbetts Pass). They too are closed for the season. …and you read it first right here.
FYI: Highway 120 over Tioga Pass is not considered a “Trans-Sierra” highway. Most of it is maintained by the National Park Service because most of the roadway is inside Yosemite. Their internal police (told to me dozens of times but rarely publicized) is to stop road clearing/snow plowing as of November 1 each year. This same policy applies to Glacier Point Road because it too is an “inside the park” roadway.
Sonora Pass (108) & Ebbetts Pass (4) officially are Trans-Sierra highways and outside Yosemite National Park and, because so, their clearing/plowing policies are different than those of the NPS. The California Department of Transportation (DOT) push the envelope a bit & consider clearing/plowing through November 15. Autumn, 1998 delivered early precipitation which meant an earlier closing of both Sonora & Ebbetts Pass. Once again, yosemitegold.com has learned exclusively that both of these passes are indeed closed for the season.
As regular internet users are well aware, the fastest method of information delivery has now moved from newspapers, wire services, radio & TV to cyberspace. For this reason, we suggest you bookmark the yosemitegold.com homepage (via the hot link just below) for the latest, most accurate information of Yosemite and the surrounding Gold Country.