Highway 140 Re-opened, Hot Showers Restored

(Orange County Firefighter Tim O'hare watches blaze spread across the Briceburg mountains along side the Merced River Sunday, July 27, 2008 in Briceburg, Calif. AP Photo/Gary Kazanjian)The now notorious Mariposa blaze (the so-called Telegraph Fire) was reported 40 percent contained Wednesday, having over the course of five days torched some 50 square miles and 21 homes along the Merced River gateway to Yosemite.

"The road is open," California Highway Patrol Sgt. Joseph Adkins told the AP, "but the major issue is the helicopters dipping down into the river sucking up water... people stop to take pictures, especially foreign tourists, because it's exciting and fascinating."

Inside the park the air is thick with smoke and major power is yet to be restored. The only electricity comes from park generators. "We may not have electricity for the lights," says Kenny Karst, spokesman for park concessioner Delaware North, "but now some people can take hot showers."

Move fast... Now's your chance to experience Yosemite the way it was in the days of John Muir.

Move Over Fish: Here Come the Frogs!

Mountain Yellow-Legged Frog (Rana Muscosa), candidate for endangered species status. USFS Photo.The frogs were there first. Then people--Basque sheepherders, gold miners, recreational anglers served by the USFS and the Department of Fish and Game--brought the fish. The fish ate the frogs. Oops.

Now the Forest Service, in a setup ripe for a new Pixar/Disney blockbuster (Finding Nemo meets Watership Down), is proposing to treat the interlopers to a few years of thorough gill-netting and electroshock.

Once the door is open, so the thinking goes, the frogs will leap back to their ancestral homeland. "They are capable of moving on their own," USFS spokesman Rex Norman told the AP, "and we prefer for them to do that."

The Forest Service Yellow-Legged Frog Page.

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To Mammoth in 65 Minutes--for $79

Image courtesy Hot Creek Aviation.Horizon has officially announced new daily service from LAX to Mammoth Yosemite Airport (MMH) starting Dec. 18, 2008, running through April 12, 2009. The one-hour-and-five-minute flight will depart Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) daily at 2:20 p.m. and arrive at Mammoth at 3:25 p.m. The return flight leaves Mammoth at 4:05 p.m. and arrives at LAX at 5:10 p.m.

FARE RULES: Valid between Los Angeles (LAX) and Mammoth (MMH). For $79 each way fare shown, valid Sun-Wed to Mammoth and Tues-Fri from Mammoth on flights Jan. 4-30, 2009. Fares of $79 and $99 must be purchased 7 days or more before travel. Etc., Etc.

In the meantime, the Mammoth airport has been closed since the end of May (and will remain so through September) in order to undergo a $6 million "runway rehabilitation and terminal remodeling."

The press release.

Alaska/Horizon Airlines MMH page.

Ken Burns Does Yosemite

Baseball, Jazz, War... and now "The National Parks: America's Best Idea."

"In Europe, you had the Roman coliseum or Notre Dame or the Cologne cathedral, but we didn't have anything like that in America," said Dayton Duncan, who wrote the script and authored the companion book, to be published by Alfred Knopf. "But we did have these spectacular natural landscapes that were as unique and ancient as anything in the Old World. But unlike in Europe, they did not belong to monarchs or nobility. They belong to everyone."

The 12-hour, six-part series is set to air on PBS in fall 2009.

The full press release on EarthTimes.

The Nose in 2 hours, 43 minutes, 33 seconds

Chronicle photo by Michael Maloney."I feel just like Lightning McQueen," said Hans Florine after he and his partner, Yuji Hirayama, on their third attempt, managed to break the world speed record up the 2900-foot route on Yosemite's El Capitan.

Peter Fimrite for the SF Chronicle.