Between May 5th and 7th, all kinds of people interested in birds will be migrating in to light in El Portal for the 3rd Annual Yosemite Birding Fesival!

Friday will feature an evening reception with wine and hors d’oeuvres to get everyone acquainted, and an evening program by artist Keith Hansen about his career and his passion for birds. At the same time a group will carpool to observe the unique crepuscular courtship flight of the Wilson’s snipe.

Saturday morning field trips, lead by people like Ted Beedy, Dave Shuford, Jeff Maurer, and Deepak Dathatri will be made to locations in Yosemite Valley, Foresta, Crane Flat, and El Portal.

The afternoon schedule allows some resting up before a second day’s reception and an evening presentation by USFWS wildlife biologist Joe Burley on the recovery of the California Condor.

The fee for the weekend festival is $130 With their 15% discount, Y.A. members can enroll for only $110.50! Sign up today for this terrific spring event.

Peter and Donna Thomas, a Santa Cruz couple with a long interest in California's mountains and wildflowers, recently set out trying to reconstruct John Muir's first cross-state trek from Oakand to Yosemite in 1868.

The couple will be paralleling Muir's 300-mile route, altered as necessary to get past the freeways, housing developments, irrigation canals, factories and industrial-scale farms that have since popped up.

The Thomases will be decked out in modern camping gear and will carry a cell phone connected to friends and their camper van, with credit cards for hotels -- unlike the simple bedroll and sack of flour Muir evidently relied upon.

Assuming they make it, the couple will end the walking phase of their journey on May 13 in Yosemite Valley with a talk at Yosemite Lodge.

Just released, The Last Season by Eric Blehm details the extraordinary life of legendary backcountry ranger Randy Morgenson and his mysterious disappearance in California's unforgiving Sierra Nevada.

Morgenson, who grew up in Yosemite Valley, spent twenty-eight summers living alone in this craggy wilderness and became a celebrated ranger in the National Park Service's backcountry unit.

Over the years, the isolation that Morgenson sought began to take its toll, and he grew increasingly estranged from his wife and friends.

When, at the height of his struggles, he went missing without a trace in Kings Canyon National Park, where he had long patrolled, many suspected suicide or foul play.

This reconstruction of a desperate search-and-rescue operation woven with Morgenson's riveting biography takes readers deep into the heart of the High Sierra and into the little-known and much-romanticized world of the backcountry rangers.

The book normally retails for $24.95, but with their 15% discount, YA members can buy it now for only $21.11!

Recently the National Park Service installed a new web cam at Turtleback Dome that captures views of the Merced River Canyon and the foothills to the west of the park.

What distinguishes the new camera is that it provides viewers weather and air quality data on a real time basis.

This new view adds to the variety of web cam images now available on the YA web site. We encourage you to visit our web cam page often!