On busy summer weekends, visitors to Yosemite Valley wait in a line of cars just to pay $30 and circle, in some cases for hours, to find parking.

Between June and September, monthly visits to the national park often surpass half a million people. But come winter that figure plummets to roughly a quarter as many.

Yosemite regulars will tell you that people don’t know what they’re missing.

“I’ve always said winter is one of the best times to visit Yosemite,” said James Kaiser, the author of a guide to the park. “The scenery is spectacular. To be there when the granite peaks and towering pines are covered in snow is to experience Yosemite at its most primordial.”

A blanket of snow creates a quiet stillness across the park. Visitors on cross-country skis and snowshoes slip into a wilderness that is home to foxes, bears and elusive bobcats.

Scott Gediman, a park spokesman, said some people may have the mistaken notion that the park is closed in winter.

Heavy snow can sometimes disrupt vehicle traffic, but otherwise, he said, “There’s a lot of great stuff in the wintertime that you can’t do the rest of the year.”

That includes ice skating at Half Dome Village Ice Rink and hitting the slopes of Badger Pass, California’s oldest ski area.

The winter solstice is still more than a couple weeks away, but several storms have already dumped snow on the Sierra Nevada. In Yosemite, a blue-tinted frost has lately covered the valley floor, at roughly 4,000 feet above sea level.

The park shared some photos.

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