Rocky Mountain National Park will impose its annual peak-season reservation requirements beginning Friday of Memorial Day weekend with the same rules that were in effect last year.
will be required to enter the Bear Lake Road corridor from 5 a.m. until 6 p.m., and from 9 a.m. until 2 p.m. for the rest of the park. Reservations are available for . Reservations are free but recreation.gov charges a $2 processing fee.
Reservations for the Bear Lake corridor will be required until Oct. 19. Reservations for the rest of the park will end on Oct. 13.
Reservations for the Memorial Day weekend through June 30 will go on sale May 1 at 8 a.m. Reservations for July go on sale June 1. Reservations for the rest of the season go on sale the first day of the preceding month.
Park officials imposed timed-entry reservation requirements in 2020 during the COVID pandemic and brought them back as a “pilot” program in 2021-23 as a strategy to prevent overcrowding, avoid traffic congestion and reduce impacts on park resources. They were made permanent in 2024.
The National Park Service has not yet announced visitation numbers for 2025. Rocky was the nation’s fifth-busiest national park in 2024 with 4.15 million visitors, behind Great Smoky Mountains, Zion, Grand Canyon and Yellowstone.
Moraine Park, Rocky’s largest campground, reopened last July after a two-year construction project and will be fully operational this summer. Camping reservations are required beginning May 21 and are available six months in advance through recreation.gov.
