Archive: Sierra

President Obama and his family spent Fathers Day weekend in Yosemite Valley and appeared to be appropriately blown away.

It's a bit of a stretch, but why not? The spider and the singer both dress in black.

Majestic Yosemite Hotel and Half Dome Village just don't sound like Yosemite. Fix it.

The first media op of the season was today. Water content across the range is at 108 percent of normal.

Looks like California will have a ski season and maybe even a winter snowpack.

An exhibit of World War II camp photos at the Skirball includes images by Dorothea Lange and Toyo Miyatake.

A new study looks at blue oak tree rings in the Sierra Nevada. "The 2015 low is unprecedented in the context of the past 500 years," says a journal report.

For the first time anyone has noticed, the giant trees in Sequoia National Park are showing signs of drought distress. Scientists go for a climb.

It snowed yesterday in Tioga Pass, Sonora Pass and other higher elevations of the Sierra Nevada.

An echo from the recent past at the scenic brine lake on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada range.

Gov. Brown orders the state's first-ever 25% cut in water use as the winter ends with essentially no snowpack. "This is the new normal,” Brown says. “We will learn how to cope with this.”

Not only is there not much snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, we're setting winter records for warmth -- again -- and the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge has returned.

Three of the iconic Yosemite waterfalls have awakened from the drought — enjoy. Also, the rainfall totals from three nice days of cleansing rain in the Los Angeles area.

I first wrote about negotiations between the Owens Valley and Los Angeles over the noxious dust that blows off of Owens Lake 25 years ago. So it seems a little bizarre that they finally have a deal both sides can live with.

Here's as sure a sign as any about the extent of the California snowfall drought.

Avalanche dogs at Mammoth Mountain Ski Area do their thing on video — finding people buried in the snow. That's pretty much it.

This story seems a bit too perfect to be what it is, but here ya go. The location and the names of the couple who found the coins are being kept private.

Folsom Lake is six feet higher, but that only means the reservoir is at 19% of capacity instead of 17%. Nice graphic shows how water use differs around the state.

As much as 6-7 inches of rain could fall as the ridiculously resilient ridge retreats. SoCal won't be part of the big event, at least so far.

It felt very weird to have a few splatters on the car windshield. Ten minutes later, a few more drops hit our breakfast table. Alert the networks!

Weather models show California's historically dry weather is expected to continue. Gov. Brown today declared a drought emergency. The Obama Administration named 27 counties as disaster areas.

Check out to the NOAA satellite pictures and a release from Mono County. Plus: Olympic hopefuls like Lindsey Jacobellis (video) are in Mammoth this weekend.

Dave McCoy, the former city of Los Angeles hydrographer in the Sierras who founded the Mammoth Mountain ski area, is now 98 years old.

Near Aberdeen, CA in the Eastern Sierra's Inyo County.

For months now, Los Angeles media, historians and civic officials have been thinking and talking about the city's water link to the Eastern Sierra and what it all means. It has been a good and useful exercise. Tuesday's reenactment was itself pretty cool.

Part 2 of an excerpt adapted from "San Fernando Valley: America's Suburb" for the 100th anniversary of the Los Angeles Aqueduct.

A couple of the chapters in my book on the San Fernando Valley deal with the Los Angeles Aqueduct and how abundant water changed the city and the valley. It holds up, I'm pleased to say. For this week's anniversary, here's an adapted version.

Mark Berry was 17 when he and a friend stole some dynamite and, in Sept. 1976, blew up the Alabama Spillway gate on the Los Angeles Aqueduct in the Owens Valley.

The quarterly magazine from UC Press devotes its entire fall issue to water, the aqueduct from the Sierra Nevada and the Mulholland legacy. The issue will be a keeper for anyone with an ounce of water geekdom in them, and for many others who just like LA's layered backstories.

For the first time since the Rim fire was at its peak, travelers can drive between the Eastern Sierra and the heart of Yosemite National Park.

Here's the latest fact sheet from the incident command post, posted about 20 minutes ago.

The National Park Service posted this time lapse of the Rim fire as observed from the Crane Flate helicopter base and looking north from Glacier Point.

The burn area now covers 301 square miles, but the spread is slowing and officials predict full containment by Sept. 10. Closures continue within Yosemite National Park.

You won't be able to go between the Eastern Sierra and Yosemite Valley starting at noon Wednesday. Fire suppression efforts will be going on along the high country road. The fire has now burned across 184,481 acres.

The Rim fire in and around the west side of Yosemite National Park jumped Monday to 160,980 charred acres, with new evacuations outside the park. But firefighters were able to declare 20% containment.

Anyone making the flights up and down California this morning could not fail to be impressed and awed by the monster smoke cloud being sent up over the Sierra from the Rim Fire. Check out the view inside.

Most of Yosemite National Park is not affected by the giant Rim Fire — check out the High Sierra cam from a few minutes ago. The northern route into the park and the area around Hetch Hetchy are closed. Here's the latest update.

A milestone of spring in California — the opening of the Tioga Pass road through the backcountry of Yosemite National Park — will take place on the fourth earliest date since 1980.

June Mountain, the once-popular ski area that is about 30 miles beyond Mammoth up highway 395 in the Eastern Sierra, did not open this past winter. But June will be back later this year, the operator announced.

People up in the Eastern Sierra noticed recently that the sky was kind of hazy, and the usual culprit — dust from the Owens Lake bed that the Los Angeles DWP dried up years ago — could not be blamed. Turns out the haze was caused by suspended particles from "a massive dust event last week in the Gobi Desert" that rode the jet stream across the Pacific.

"The High Sierra beckons," Brown's Twitter feed says....

Michael J. Ybarra, the longtime California freelancer who died recently in a fall near Yosemite, had a byline this week in the Los Angeles Times Calendar section.

The venerable but money-losing June Mountain Ski Area will not operate this summer and, more pointedly, will not have a ski season this coming winter. The future beyond that was left unclear in today's announcement. "June was perceived by many to be a more remote gem for skiers and snowboarders," says outdoors writer Peter Thomas.

Here are pictures of snow last night in historic Bodie, the preserved mining town in the Eastern Sierra near Bridgeport. The Tioga Road into Yosemite National Park reopened today after a weather closure.

China's dust seems to create more snow than California dust. Though the data is still incomplete.

I didn't really know the Jill Kinmont story until reading today's LA Times obituary, but it has so many noteworthy elements. I've spent an hour reading about her.

Two men who met through Vimeo made a stunning video from time lapse photos of Yosemite National Park.

The state has taken the Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve off the parks closure list.

The National Weather Service update for Mammoth Mountain contained a startling fact.

A couple of hardy surfers hit the waves today on Lake Tahoe — at 6,225 feet above sea level.

The folks at Mammoth Mountain must want people to come ski and board, since they send out pics like this.

The science story of the day is that one of the basic assumptions about life on Earth — and potentially elsewhere (get it?) — has been upended by a discovery at Mono Lake, the briny prehistoric lake in the Eastern Sierra.

Bennet Kessler, the dean of Eastern Sierra journalists, has covered more than her share of crashes on U.S. highway 395. "A horrible scene of death, fire and suffering," she wrote in today's story.

Eight inches fell on Mammoth Mountain over the weekend with a "generous delivery of powder" in the Lake Tahoe area, and with that the winter snowpack watch begins. The start...

Yosemite National Park says the historic Ahwahnee Hotel will stay closed until Friday at 4 p.m. while geologists puzzle over whether any more rocks are likely to crash down from...

The Ahwahnee Hotel has been evacuated due to a rock fall in the Royal Arches section. About 300 guests are affected. No one has been hurt, although some cars have...

Nic Fiore taught skiing at Badger Pass in Yosemite National Park for more than 50 years, but Scott McAuley of Angel City Press remembers his friend as the summer impresario...

Ellie Nesler came to public attention in 1993 when she shot and killed the accused molester of her son during a hearing in a Tuolumne County courtroom. She was convicted...

This winter skiers and snowboarders will be able to fly to Mammoth for the first time in years. Tickets go on sale Monday for new Horizon Airlines service from LAX...

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa put on his jeans and outdoor boots and helicoptered up to the Eastern Sierra this morning to all but apologize to the locals for Los Angeles stripping...

Benett Kessler lives 225 miles from Los Angeles but has been covering the Department of Water and Power as a local story for more than 25 years.

John Shannon's literary private detective Jack Liffey has lived in Redondo Beach and (lovely) Mar Vista and I think even wandered up Highway 395 to the Eastern Sierra. But he's...

Eleven years ago, Ellie Nesler pulled a gun in a Central California courtroom and killed a man accused of molesting her young son. There was the usual hero worship from...