A few people on our facebook page have noted that the permits for Yosemite camping and half dome climbing have been selling out in seconds. Thus, it’s near impossible for a family to grab reservations for a vacation to one of our most gorgeous National Parks. Well, we now know why.
Not satisfied with ruining concert and sports games across the country, scalpers are at it yet again. According to the Sacremento Bee, scalpers are selling camping permits from $100 to $150 per night on craigslist. This, compared to the $20 per night they normally cost. This has also been happening with permits to climb Half-Dome.
Thankfully, the Park Service isn’t taking this lightly. They have been actively shutting down all eBay auctions selling the permits, but they haven’t had much luck shutting down Craigslist ads. Yosemite spokesman Craig Gediman said “We want to stop it as much as we can. It’s not fair. These aren’t intended to go into the after-market. But it’s becoming more sophisticated. … People are finding ways to abuse the system.” The Park Service is currently working on ways to stop the scalpers from buying all the permits, but as of now they haven’t been all that successful.
Thankfully, the scalping appears to be limited to Yosemite at the moment. If the scalpers are successful at Yosemite though, we can expect this nonsense to spread to other popular parks. Clearly there is a market for the reservations, as people are willing to spend $100-$150/night for a permit. However, these are our National Parks. They are a national treasure that belongs to all Americans. They are also one of the few places that everyone, poor and rich have the ability to visit, and this shouldn’t change. Lets hope that the NPS manages to find a way to get a handle on the scalping so all of us actually has a chance to visit Yosemite.
More information available at the Sacramento Bee.
WE ALL NEED TO SCAN CRAIGSLIST AND REPORT THESE PEOPLE,IT’S
OUR NATIONAL TREASURES THEIR SCALPING.
i just returned from Yosemite and i had a wonderful time in fact i would recommend every one to see this awesome area. but not under the terms of getting ticket’s from scalpers . Why would you pay steep dollars when its only 20.00n ?are you people that hard up that you have to sort to this ignorance’s? ripping off families? go some where else and do your dirty business the national parks are no place for people like you
Requiring ID that matches the original purchaser should solve this pretty quickly, with only a bit of occasional annoyance. I don’t see why the venues are so slow to adopt this practice.
I agree, having a requirement that someone in the party must show an ID that matches the ticket purchase would stop this scalping
When a person buys more than 1 permit, he should have to name the persons using each permit, and only those persons should be permitted to use them by showing ID.
All you need to fix the problem is a Name / ID check to verify the pass. If you check out, then go ahead, enjoy yourself! Welcome to the National Parks!
… As someone who lost out by 7 on the morning they opened at 7 a.m. for the camping dates I wanted, I’d like to know how we can get Craigslist to pull the ads for camping and permits like they’ve done before for other inappropriate ads. Anybody?? PS: I remember the days when you could wake up on a Friday morning and say “Let’s go to Yosemite and go camping” and get a spot without a reservation. Imagine! And I’m not that old, really.
We Americans are good at commercializing everything, even the Federal Government is in the act. Yes, I remember when you could wake up and say “let’s go camping”. These days are long gone. I built a 1’200 foot log cabin in Colorado to solve that problem. Eric