Yosemite’s Ahwahnee Hotel set to reopen at 4 p.m. Friday after rockfall

The landmark Ahwahnee Hotel in California’s Yosemite National Park, which was shut down Wednesday, Aug. 26,  after a rockfall showered debris on its parking lot, is expected to reopen at 4 p.m. Friday, park officials said this afternoon. Although no one was injured in the incident, they said, hotel guests were evacuated as a safety measure.

Park spokeswoman Kari Cobb said the reopening time was based on the advice of geologists who examined the site.  The time could be changed should there be more rockfalls.

“The last rockfall activity occurred around 4 p.m yesterday,” Cobb said. “Typically, if there’s going to be more activity on the same spot, it generally occurs within 24 hours after the first occurrence. As a precaution, we expanded the caution to 48 hours.”

The hotel is about 200 feet from the base of the Royal Arches formation that produced the rockfall, she said, adding that there was no harm done to the historic structure. A few parked cars were damaged.

At the time, the hotel, which has 123 rooms in its main building and cottages, was fully booked with about 300 guests, Cobb said, most of whom were relocated to Tenaya Lodge or Yosemite View Lodge near the park.  Relocated guests will be eligible for a refund of the difference between the rate they paid for their Ahwahnee room and rate at the hotel they were relocated to, she added.

Guests with questions or room reservations for Thursday night were directed to central reservations for the concessionaire who runs the Ahwahnee, DNC Parks and Resorts at Yosemite Inc. , (801) 559-5000. Cancellation penalties are being waived for Ahwahnee guests who choose to cancel their stays rather than be rebooked into another hotel, Cobb said.

In another problem for park visitors, Big Oak Flat Road on the park’s northwest side, a main highway for visitors arriving from the San Francisco area, was closed today from Highway 140 (El Portal Road) to Crane Flat because of a prescribed fire that escaped its boundaries.

—Jane Engle, assistant Los Angeles Times Travel editor

Photo: A plume of dust rises from a rockfall Wednesday near the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park. Credit: Erik Skindrud/Associated Press/National Park Service

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 3:48 pm by Jane Engle and is filed under California, Eco-Travel, Family & Kids, Hotels, Luxury Travel, National Parks, News, Tips & Advice, Outdoors & Adventure, Sierra Nevada, Yosemite National Park. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.