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.

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.

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.

Spurious spruce (Business Week)"Go for Verizon Wireless and stay away from T-Mobile," writes Alena Samuels (LAT). "Although your best bet is probably to get a homing pigeon."

The LA Times compares reception in the national parks.

Tony Perrottet writes a balanced profile of the man who made the place famous.

Smithsonian magazine, July 2008.

Granite Frontiers: A Century of Yosemite Climbing.

June 7-October 27.
The Yosemite Museum.

Hosted by the Yosemite Climbing Association and the U.S. Park Service.

Writes Stewart Green: "Some of the displayed stuff includes a RURP (Realized Ultimate Reality Piton) used by Royal Robbins when he soloed the Muir Wall in 1968; Lynn Hill’s climbing shoes from her landmark 1993 free ascent of El Cap’s Nose; and two of the famous “Stoveleg” pitons, made from a wood stove’s legs, that were used on the first ascent of the Nose in 1958. You’ll also find historical videos and photographs, as well as a granite wall where your kids can plug cams and wired nuts in cracks."

P.S. Rumor has it this exhibit may one day become a museum in its own right, adjacent Camp IV, on the site of the old Yosemite Lodge Gas Station.

(David McNew / Getty Image)"We must recognize the severity of this crisis we face," said governor Schwarzenegger, proclaiming a statewide drought (and blaming court-ordered protections for San Joaquin salmon).

"The snowpack has been disappearing," said state Department of Water Resources Director Lester Snow, "and it has not manifest itself as runoff."

The solution? "Upgrade California's water infrastructure," said the governor. "Let's fix all of these things that need to be fixed rather than waiting and waiting and waiting."

Evan Halper, LA Times.

(Old-school fireproofing, Converse Basin, Giant Sequoia National Monument.) "Check out this plot hatched deep in the bowels of the Interior Department," writes Joan McCarter, in her Diary of a Mad Voter.

“The financial incentive of the forest service in implementing the forest plan," wrote Judge John T Noonan Jr of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, "is as operative, as tangible, and as troublesome as it would be if ... the agency was the paid accomplice of the loggers...”

1. Times Square: 35 million/year; 2. Vegas Strip: 31 million/year. NYT PHOTO.Not the National Parks, apparently. Lake Mead beats the Grand Canyon by 3 million visitors annually. And Disney's Magic Kingdom beats the waterfalls of Yosemite by... wanna guess?

14 million credit-card wielding human beings per year.

America's Top 25 most-visited tourist destinations (forbestraveler.com)