Re: Lottery for North Pines Campground.

I don't think anyone posted this yet but there is a pilot program starting for a lottery for North Pines Campground.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/yosemite-lottery-camping-spaces/index.html

Thanks for the reminder, I forgot to sign up!

Anyway I cannot believe that there's a $10 non-refundable fee for entering the lottery. Just so stupid and unnecessary. Gotta make sure all of these middleman contractors line their pockets, I guess.

Struck out in the North Pines Lottery. Results posted this morning. I would really like to find out how many lottery applications there were for the 640 spots.

Haven't seen anyone post on social media that they won, so I would imagine the demand for this pilot program generated a TON of revenue for the middlemen behind Recreation.gov. Expect to see this program expanded pretty significantly over the coming years.

I received an email from the National Park Service after I inquired as to how many applications there were for the lottery. I was told "There were over 22,000 applications for the 640 time slots, for a success rate of under 3%." I will definitely save my $10 in the future but this sure turned out to be a fundraiser for the Recreation.gov contractor.

I hope they don't expand this. The current system is a type of pseudo lottery already without the extra step and paying $10 for about the same odds to get a site. Just read up on the procedure and be ready on the appropriate 15th of the month and push
the enter button at 7 a.m. and hope you get a site...kind of like a lottery. The complainers are usually the ones who come out of the fog about a month before they want to go and then complain that all the sites are already reserved. Just do your homework if you want to camp in Yosemite...