On July 24th the Mono Lake Committee and Barefoot Wine & Bubbly held a fashion show fundraiser for the Outdoor Experiences Program. There was a great turnout for a fun show featuring locals strutting down an astroturf runway in the Lee Vining Community Center.

Trail Chic 2010 models.

Trail Chic is a fundraiser for the Outdoor Experiences program, specifically to raise money for the Bus Money Fund, which helps Los Angeles youth with transportation costs of getting to Mono Lake. Quite often we find school groups, youth groups, and community groups that (more…)

The Urban Semillas group reaches the top of Lembert Dome. Photo by Michael Clausen.

“Take small steps,” said Santiago Escruceria, the Outdoor Experiences Manager, “that’s the trick to hiking on a steeper slope without losing lots of energy,” and the group took it to heart, suddenly looking like the experienced hikers that we knew they could be.

The group that came to participate in the Mono Lake Committee’s Outdoor Experiences program during the first week of July was composed of high school graduates and kids in their early-20s from Los Angeles. They were all a part of a program called Urban Semillas, a young adult program that teaches students about water and trees, people’s relationship with nature, where their water comes from, and that nature isn’t something that you just see on TV—it’s real—and when they visit places like Yosemite and Mono Lake, it’s ALL around them.

We were hiking to Lembert Dome and Dog Lakes, two places that neither I nor the group had ever been to, so we were all (more…)

I hope you’ll be in Lee Vining this Saturday for the first ever Trail Chic fashion show at the Lee Vining Community Center. It’s a fashion show fundraiser for the Mono Lake Committee’s Outdoor Experiences program.

When: 7:30pm, Saturday, July 24th, 2010
Where: Lee Vining Community Center
What: A fashion show featuring wines & bubbly by Barefoot, a silent auction, and raffle
Admission: Free!

Yes, it’s a fashion show.

There will be … Barefoot wine & bubbly (for a donation) … a silent auction featuring some amazing wines … a wide and wild variety of fun hiker/adventurer styles modeled by local outdoor aficionados. I don’t want to give away all of the surprises in store for the evening, but (more…)

The ninth annual Mono Basin Bird Chautauqua was another rousing success, wrapping up on Sunday afternoon with great music by Kris Delmhorst & Jeffrey Foucault and delicious food benefitting Lee Vining High School.

For more photos from the 2010 Chautauqua, check out the Mono Lake Committee’s Flickr set and join the Mono Basin Bird Chautauqua group to add your images to the collection. And mark your calendar right away for the tenth anniversary of the Mono Basin Bird Chautauqua: June 17–19, 2011!

Jeffrey Foucault & Kris Delmhorst drew from their repertoire of songs about birds for the Chautauqua crowd. Photo by Arya Degenhardt.

Rob, Bob, Lundy, and Rena prepared tasty meals as a fundraiser for Lee Vining High School. Photo by Elin Ljung.

Mono Lake Committee founder David Gaines toured tirelessly around California with carousel of slides and a call to help a dying lake–talking to anyone who would listen. The Mono Lake Committee has continued this tradition by showing The Mono Lake Story slideshow at our headquarters in Lee Vining every year to thousands of visitors and Mono Lake enthusiasts. This old tradition will now continue in a new media format.

We are excited to announce that we are creating a 20-minute film (more…)

Canoe on Mono Lake this summer! Call (760) 647-6595 for reservations. Photo by Santiago Escruceria.

Imagine gliding through groves of tufa towers as nearby California Gulls dine on brine shrimp and alkali flies. Summer canoe tours on Mono Lake offer a fun, family-friendly way to experience Mono Lake up close.

We’ll investigate Mono Lake’s unusual natural history, from multitudes of brine shrimp found nowhere else on earth, to scuba-diving (more…)

Could these Wilson's Phalaropes be a few feet from a shadow biosphere?

Last week the Royal Society in London hosted a discussion meeting about the detection of extra-terrestrial life and the consequences for science and society. During the symposium/discussion Dr. Paul Davies (University of Arizona) presented a webcast lecture The eerie silence: are we alone in the universe? In this webcast he discussed the progress of SETI and the continuing, albeit thus far, quiet search for intelligent life beyond earth. But what of any (more…)

The complete listing of 2010 Field Seminars is now online. Registration for Field Seminars for Mono Lake Committee members begins on February 1 (already a member login here, become a member now here). Open registration begins on March 1. It’s time to begin making your summer and fall Field Seminar plans!

How do you find the listing of seminars? There are three ways to get there:

—Navigate to the Field Seminar page by mousing over “visit” at the top of the page. Click on “things to do” in the menu that drops down. Then click on “click here for the full list” under the Special Field Seminars heading on that page.

—You can also go straight to the Field Seminar page from the Mono Lake Website’s home page. Just click on this button on the right-hand side of the page:

—Also, as you navigate through the Mono Lake Website, you’ll see this ad on the right-hand side of most pages. You can click on it to go straight to the seminar page!