The U.S. Postal Service released a new Yosemite National Park international rate stamp at the end of February, and it's a beauty!

Featuring a stunning view of "Gates of the Valley" by famed outdoor photographer Galen Rowell, the stamp is part of the new "Scenic American Landscape" series.

For collectors and Yosemite lovers, the Yosemite Association has developed a special First Day of Sale Cachet that carries the special cancellation developed for the stamp along with the normal Yosemite National Park postal cancellation.

The ivory envelope is printed with a beautiful line drawing of El Capitan by Jane Gyer, along with a description of the image and its significance.

The cachet is now available for only $5, and Y.A. members receive a 15% discount and can purchase this collectible for only $4.25

How will you be spending your summer? Imagine waking up each morning to the sights and sounds of Yosemite. As a YA member, you can – by volunteering in the park this year! We have two programs, and one or both might be right for you.

Month-long volunteers assist Yosemite visitors from around the world providing information and answering questions while fulfilling YA’s educational mission and enrolling new members. This year, we have a special need for volunteers to live and work in Wawona and Tuolumne Meadows.

Month-long volunteers receive free camping in group sites, a 30% discount at YA bookstores, a free Outdoor Adventure, and discount cards from the concessionaire. Most volunteers work five days a week. Volunteers are needed May through September in Wawona, and mid-June through September in Tuolumne Meadows.

If you want to help Yosemite, but don’t have a full month to give, consider volunteering for our Cooperative Work Weeks!Volunteers undertake restoration work in locations throughout the park, working four days with a day off in the middle of the week to rejuvenate and explore. Each trip accommodates up to fifteen volunteers at group camp sites from Sunday afternoon to the following Saturday morning. Volunteers contribute $60 to help cover the cost of meals served during their stay.

Publishers Weekly calls Clarence King the Indiana Jones of the 19th century.

In The Explorer King, one of the year's most compelling biographies, Robert Wilson paints a brilliant portrait of King -- a scientist-explorer whose mountain-scaling, desert-crossing, river-fording, blizzard-surviving adventures helped create the new West.

The Yale-educated King went west in 1863 at age twenty-one as a geologist-explorer.

During the next decade he scaled the highest peaks of the Sierra Nevada, published a popular book now considered a classic of adventure literature, initiated a groundbreaking land survey of the American West, and ultimately uncovered one of the greatest frauds of the century -- the Great Diamond Hoax, a discovery that made him an international celebrity at a time when they were few and far between.

The book normally retails for $26, but with their 15% discount, YA members can buy it now for only $22.10!

Recently San Francisco Chronicle columnist Tom Stienstra took a snowshoe walk from Badger Pass to Dewey Point.

He wrote about that trip through Yosemite's magnificent winter scenery, noting that he felt a "sense of eternity," knowing that the landscape had been shaped over thousands of years.

Snowshoeing has found new popularity in the park, to the point that DNC Parks & Resorts now rents snowshoes at Badger Pass.

You can read more about Stienstra's snowshoe adventure, learn the route he took to Dewey Point, and find out what you'll need to try it yourself in the full Chronicle article that appears in our Newsroom.