Snow Tubing in the National Parks

The Park Service lists 4 units with snow tubing. Olympic's Hurricane Ridge and Yosemite's Badger Pass have tubing operations, but not every listed park has a tubing hill. Check the winter road and ski-area status before packing the family and setting out.

The two real tubing hills

01Olympic National Park: Hurricane Ridge Tubing Park
The system's most complete tubing setup. At 5,242 feet on Hurricane Ridge, the tubing park inside the Hurricane Ridge Ski Area runs tubing for all ages - tickets are sold at the ski area trailer in the parking lot, and only the ski area's own tubes are allowed on the hill, which keeps things simple (and means you don't need to pack gear). For the smallest sledders there's a second, free option: the Children's Snowplay Area west of the parking lot, where kids eight and under sled on bring-your-own tubes and sleds (no runner sleds). The ridge operates in winter when snow, road access and staffing permit; ranger-led snowshoe walks may round out the day. The road and traction rules are the real gate. Check the park's winter page for current operations before you drive.
Olympic fees, hours and alerts
02Yosemite National Park: Badger Pass
The historic option: Badger Pass Ski Area opened in 1935, and snow tubing is on its official activity list alongside downhill skiing, snowboarding, cross-country and snowshoeing. One rule matters for families: sledding and other snow play are NOT allowed at Badger Pass itself - the tubing happens through the ski area's operation, and free-form snow play belongs elsewhere in the park. The setting does the rest: tubing in Yosemite's high country, with the valley's cliffs waiting below for the rest of the day.
Yosemite fees, hours and alerts

What the other parks offer

Voyageurs offers snowmobiling and ice-road travel, but do not assume it has a staffed tubing hill. At Saratoga, sledding after a storm is a local tradition, not a ticketed tubing operation. Check each park’s current winter guidance before planning around either one.

How to tube a national park

Tickets and tubes, sorted. Hurricane Ridge sells tubing tickets at the ski-area trailer and supplies the tubes - no outside tubes on the tubing hill. Badger Pass runs its own operation through the ski area. Arrive early on powder weekends; the hills are small and the demand is not.

The road is the gate. Hurricane Ridge Road runs a winter schedule with chain requirements, and storms close it outright. Yosemite's Glacier Point Road to Badger Pass is plowed, but chains can be required anywhere in the Sierra winter. The alerts guide decodes the status board.

Dress for sitting in snow. Waterproof pants and gloves matter more than technical anything; tubing is downhill fun with uphill waiting.

Small kids have their own lane. Hurricane Ridge's free Children's Snowplay Area (eight and under, west of the parking lot) is the rare park provision for the smallest sledders - bring their sled, skip the ticket line.

A short history of tubing in the parks

Tubing is sledding's lazier, more comfortable cousin - the truck inner tube down the farm hill, formalized - and the parks came to it through their ski areas. Badger Pass is the anchor: when Yosemite opened the area in 1935, it planted the idea that a national park could host lift-served winter fun, and the tubing hill eventually followed as the no-lessons-required complement to skiing.

Hurricane Ridge brought the model to the Northwest, pairing its small community ski area with a tubing park and a free kids' snowplay zone - the recognition that winter parks serve everyone, not just skiers. The Park Service's own winter-sports program now lists tubing, sledding and snow play as official recreation, which is the bureaucracy catching up to what families were doing on park hills all along.