A week ago, the Dome Fire was 100 acres of brush burning a quarter-mile north of Chilnualna Falls. As of Monday’s National Park Service update it’s over 3,400 acres, per Cal Fire’s incident page, and it’s still only 15% contained. It’s also, somehow, the third time this month we’ve had to write about Yosemite for reasons that have nothing to do with a vacation plan going smoothly. First the Colorado Fire closed Highway 140 right before Labor Day. Then the reservation-elimination crowding fight escalated into a Senate letter. Now a second wildfire, this one inside the park’s southern reaches near Wawona.

Short version, because I know that’s what you actually clicked for: the park is open. Yosemite Valley, Glacier Point, Mariposa Grove, Tuolumne Meadows — none of it is touched. What’s closed is a specific, mapped-out chunk of trail and backcountry south of Wawona, and it’s closed through at least September 30.

Quick Verdict: Yosemite Dome Fire, Sept. 22, 2026

Question	Answer
Is Yosemite National Park open?	Yes. Valley, Glacier Point, Mariposa Grove, Tuolumne Meadows all operating normally
Where’s the fire?	North of Wawona Dome, about 1/4 mile north of Chilnualna Falls, Mariposa County
How big is it now?	Roughly 3,420 acres, 15% contained, as of Sept. 22
What’s closed?	Chilnualna Falls Trail, routes to Buena Vista and Crescent Lakes, Ostrander Lake Trail and areas south of it, and the zone east of Wawona Road between Chinquapin and Wawona
How long is the closure in effect?	Through 11:59pm, Sept. 30, 2026, unless extended or lifted sooner
Any evacuations?	No evacuation orders or warnings as of this writing
Is Wawona itself threatened?	No immediate threat to structures, but it’s close enough that fire crews are staged there

In one sentence: Yosemite is open and the fire isn’t threatening the Valley or any developed area, but a real chunk of the Wawona backcountry — including a popular waterfall hike — is closed through the end of September and the fire is still growing.

What’s Actually Burning, and Where

The Dome Fire started the morning of September 15, ignited (per Cal Fire) at 8:28am, about a quarter-mile north of Chilnualna Falls and visible from Wawona Road. It did the thing wildfires in dry timber do when nobody’s looking: it went from roughly 100 acres to 1,100 by the next day. Call it what it is — a 900% jump in 24 hours. By September 17 it had settled (if you can call it that) at 1,177 acres, still 0% contained.

It didn’t stop there. NPS’s own daily updates track the climb: 1,977 acres and 10% containment by September 18, 2,335 acres by the 19th, 2,667 by the 20th, past 3,200 by the 21st. Cal Fire’s incident page has it at roughly 3,420 acres and 15% contained as of this writing. Containment held at 15% for three straight updates while the acreage kept climbing, which tells you crews are holding certain lines while the fire still has room to run on others — including into the footprint of the 2017 Empire Fire, an area thick with standing dead fuel from that earlier burn.

Then Sunday happened. A helicopter working the Dome Fire crashed southeast of Ostrander Lake, killing both pilots aboard, according to ABC7 Los Angeles. The aircraft, a Super Puma operated by the contract firm Precision, was making water drops when it went down. The NTSB and FAA are investigating. It’s a sobering reminder that the numbers on a containment map don’t capture what it actually takes to hold a line in terrain this steep and this remote — and it’s also, bluntly, part of why this fire has been slow to pin down. Nine helicopters and multiple hotshot crews have been assigned to it, working hand lines along the flanks in country that doesn’t have a lot of easy road access to begin with.

What’s Closed: The Actual List

Here’s the part that matters if you’re trying to plan around this instead of just reading about it.

1. Chilnualna Falls Trail — the entire 8.4-mile round-trip route, closed in full. This is normally one of the more popular Wawona-area hikes, a 2,300-foot climb to a genuinely good waterfall, and it’s off-limits for the duration.
2. The connecting trails to Buena Vista and Crescent Lakes from the top of Chilnualna Falls — closed. NPS notes both lakes are still reachable via alternate eastern approaches, if that backcountry loop was the actual goal.
3. Ostrander Lake Trail, and the area south of it — added to the closure as the fire’s footprint grew and started pushing toward that zone.
4. The area east of Wawona Road, between Chinquapin and Wawona — a broader closure zone, not just a single trail. This is the corridor most likely to catch someone who didn’t know to check before driving down from Glacier Point Road or the Highway 41 corridor.

The full closure order and map is the document to actually check before you go, not this list — it’s dated, it’s specific, and it’s the thing rangers will point to if you’re standing at a closed trailhead arguing about it. It runs through 11:59pm on September 30, 2026, unless the superintendent extends or lifts it early, which is worth remembering since fire closures routinely get extended when containment lags behind acreage the way this one has.

Is Yosemite National Park Open Right Now?

1. Yes, the park overall is open and operating normally. Yosemite Valley, Glacier Point, Mariposa Grove, and Tuolumne Meadows are unaffected by the closure zone.
2. No evacuation orders or warnings are in place, for Wawona or anywhere else, as of this week’s NPS updates.
3. Wawona itself isn’t threatened, but it’s close enough that structure protection crews are staged there and at Yosemite West as a precaution, doing prep work rather than responding to an active threat.
4. Wawona Road (Highway 41) remains open. This is a trail and backcountry-area closure, not a road closure — different from the Highway 140 shutdown from the Colorado Fire earlier this month, which actually blocked an entrance route.
5. Air quality varies by location. Most of the park sits in moderate range, but Yosemite Valley and Wawona have seen stretches of unhealthy-for-sensitive-groups smoke, particularly in the evenings. If you have respiratory issues, check the day-of conditions rather than assuming clear skies because the park is technically “open.”

Why This Is Yosemite’s Third Rough Month in a Row

I’ll say the quiet part: none of these three stories are actually connected, and it’s worth being honest about that instead of forcing a narrative. The Colorado Fire was a cement truck crash on a highway outside the park. The reservation crowding mess is a policy decision made back in February. The Dome Fire is lightning-or-human-caused backcountry ignition under investigation, in a completely different part of the park, two weeks later. Three unrelated causes.

But readers searching “is Yosemite open” don’t care about causal independence — they care that this is the third time in September they’ve had reason to ask. And there’s a real pattern underneath the coincidence: a park running at record visitation, with reservations eliminated and crowding already a Senate-letter-worthy problem, now also managing an active wildfire with a smaller permanent staff than it had a decade ago. None of these stories caused each other. All of them are landing on the same stretched organization at once.

What This Means If You’re Planning a Visit

If you were planning to hike Chilnualna Falls, Buena Vista, Crescent Lakes, or Ostrander Lake, that plan needs to change. All of it is closed through at least September 30. Consider the full breakdown in our reservations and parking guide for other Wawona-area alternatives outside the closure zone, or shift south toward Mariposa Grove, which remains fully open.

If Half Dome is on your list, this doesn’t touch it. The cables come down October 13, and the permit lottery on Recreation.gov is running exactly as it was before the fire started.

If you’re driving in via Wawona Road (Highway 41) from the south, the road itself is open, but you’ll be passing directly alongside the closure zone. Don’t assume a pullout or side trail along that stretch is fair game just because the highway is clear.

If smoke is a concern for you or anyone traveling with you, check the park’s air quality readings the morning you go, not the week before. Wawona and the Valley have both had rough smoke days depending on wind direction, and that can flip within 24 hours.

Check both primary sources before you leave, not this article. NPS’s fire information page posts daily updates, and Cal Fire’s incident page tracks acreage and containment in closer to real time. A fire that’s added roughly 300 acres a day for a week isn’t one you plan around using a five-day-old blog post.

Is This Going to Affect Fall Foliage or October Plans?

Too early to say with confidence, and I’d rather tell you that than guess. Containment has been climbing steadily even as acreage does too, which is a reasonably good sign for eventual full containment — fires that stall at 0% for a week are a different, worse story than ones adding percentage points daily. If the current trend holds, this could realistically wrap up or shrink to a mop-up operation before peak fall color arrives in the Sierra. If it doesn’t, the closure zone could extend past September 30. Either way, the smart move for an October trip is the same one that applies to any active fire: don’t build an itinerary around a specific trail reopening on a specific date. Build in a backup, and check the closure order again the week you actually go.

The Bottom Line

Yosemite National Park is open. The Dome Fire, burning since September 15 north of Wawona Dome, has grown past 3,400 acres and is 15% contained as of this week, and it’s closed a real, specific set of Wawona-area trails and backcountry — Chilnualna Falls, the routes to Buena Vista and Crescent Lakes, Ostrander Lake Trail and points south, and the zone between Chinquapin and Wawona — through at least September 30. None of that touches Yosemite Valley, Glacier Point, Mariposa Grove, or the Half Dome permit system. It’s a serious fire, serious enough that two pilots lost their lives fighting it this weekend, and it deserves to be taken seriously rather than treated as background noise in a park that’s already had a rough month. But “serious” and “the whole park is closed” aren’t the same thing, and conflating them means skipping a trip that doesn’t actually need to be skipped.

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Fire size, containment, and closure details per the National Park Service’s Yosemite fire information page and Cal Fire’s Dome Fire incident page. Closure boundaries per the official NPS closure order. Helicopter crash details per ABC7 Los Angeles. Information current as of Sept. 22, 2026 — this fire has grown roughly 300 acres a day; confirm current status at nps.gov/yose before you go.