Yosemite News

 Yosemite National 

Ash from a wildfire that scorched 34,000 acres outside Yosemite National Park is now providing the perfect nutrients for hundreds of acres of tufted poppies and other California native wildflowers to bloom this spring.The wildflowers carpeting the Merced River Canyon have brought carloads of gawkers to the narrow Highway 140 passage where the Telegraph Fire raged last July. Jan Van Wagtendonk, an emeritus researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey, says he has not seen such a brilliant display in four decades.

Forget green beer this year. In this grape-rich Calaveras County hamlet, they'll be celebrating with green wine.

Ryan M. Leahy is the Lead Bear Technician at California's Yosemite National Park. As such, it is his job to manage the balance between a healthy bear population and human safety. Earlier this winter, amid unusually high temperatures in the Yosemite Valley, Discovery News correspondent Eric Bland sat down with Leahy to talk about the wonders of hibernation and the perils of incautious park visitors. 

A couple of years ago after several new interpretive signs were put up in Yosemite National Park some Paiutes who had direct ancestry to the Yosemite area questioned Yosemite National Park why the story of Chief Tenaya and the original Yosemite Indians was not displayed. The interpretive signs were created with the assistance of Yosemite Association and the Yosemite Fund. 

by Kelly RestucciaMore than 100 years ago, at a time when the U. S. military was still segregated, nearly 500 black soldiers rode for 14 days on horseback from San Francisco to the Sierra Nevada to assume their new roles as some of the first “rangers” entrusted with the stewardship of Yosemite and Sequoia & General Grant (Kings Canyon) national parks.

Looking for a unique way to say "I Love You" this Valentine's Day? Yosemite National Park makes amore easy, with a variety of lodging packages, activities and pre-packaged dining available for the "romantically challenged." Below are ten ways to be a romantic in Yosemite National Park. 

Who would have thought you could save money on lodging by watching the mercury in your thermometer retreat into its glass bulb? It’s true ~ winter temperatures are translating into lower midweek rates for unheated tent cabins in Yosemite’s historic Curry Village. 

The public scoping period for the Badger Pass Ski Lodge Rehabilitation Environmental Assessment (EA), used to assist Yosemite National Park officials in developing a range of reasonable and feasible project alternatives and then analyzing the environmental effects of each alternative, is open now and will extend through February 13, 2009.  

The YARTS bus sped up Highway 140 from Merced into the foothills. It passed Mariposa and stopped at the entrance to Yosemite National Park. A sign read, “Chains required.” The driver parked, and deftly fitted the chains over the tires. A horde of enthused travelers lined up outside the bus, but there were no more seats. Instead of turning them away, the kindly driver allowed them to board the bus and stand in the aisle for the remaining 13 miles of the trip.

People visiting Yosemite Valley this year -- or next, or for the foreseeable future -- are going to find it more difficult to find overnight lodging. The National Park Service permanently closed 233 cabins at Curry Village in Yosemite National Park late in the fall because of the danger from falling rocks. The cabins had been off limits since early October, when the equivalent of hundreds of dump-truck loads of rock hit 17 cabins.

As melting water gushed off the ice in a tinseled maze of rivulets and tumbled through a gaping chasm, the hikers watched, wondered and worried. Unlike most backcountry travelers who pitch their tents along the John Muir Trail in the upper reaches of the Lyell Fork of the Tuolumne River, these visitors had not pushed on to scale the summit of Mount Lyell -- Yosemite's highest peak.

Visitors to the floor of the Yosemite Valley on Tuesday were pretty much contained to one intense photographer shooting the snow and ice-covered Merced River and a couple of thieving crows, but the sights in the national park were Christmas-card perfect.

California's first ski resort, Yosemite's Badger Pass Ski Area, will open on Saturday, December 20 for downhill skiing, snowboarding and cross-country skiing. The popular family destination received 24 to 36 inches of new snow since Sunday night, and groomers are out on the hill today packing down the snow and building the base.

For thousands of years, slabs of the Glacier Point cliff have broken loose, roared down at more than 100 mph and blasted the forest in nature's version of bunker bombs. Such rockfalls are triggered by earthquakes, large storms or freezing and thawing of water in granite joints. But are these frightening events also somehow connected to the toilets at the Glacier Point overlook above the sheer cliff?