THE OUT-OF-VALLEY EXPERIENCE IV : MT. HOFFMANN

Ramble to the summit of Mount Hoffman(n) . . . . What glorious landscapes are about me . . . towering in glorious array along the axis of the range, serene, majestic, snow-laden, sun-drenched, vast domes and ridges shining below them, forests, lakes, and meadows in the hollows, the pure blue bell-flower sky brooding them all--a glory day of admission into a new realm of wonders . --MUIR

“My First Summer in the Sierra”

MUIR HAD A particular fondness for 10,850-foot Mt. Hoffmann, on the whole a rather undistinguished peak and not particularly difficult to climb. But Hoffmann is nearly the geographic center of Yosemite National Park, and its summit does offer stunning views in every direction.

There are thousands of mountains in the Sierra that are more remote than Mt. Hoffmann, mountains where the traveler may go for days without seeing another person. But even on Mt. Hoffmann, it takes some effort to detect signs of civilization: the trail itself, an emergency radio transmitter on the summit--and at night, mere pinpricks of auto headlights inching along parts of Tioga Road.

I shared the summit with two sleek marmots who seemed interested not in companionship but in my food. They vanished into the granite summit rocks at dusk. With the fading of the last blood-streaks of sunset in the west came, incredibly, the croaking of a frog, the sound apparently echoing up from a lake 1,000 feet below at the foot of Hoffmann’s steep north face. I had no cheery campfire of the sort Muir used for warmth and to heat water for his tea--only the blue glow of a gas-canister stove. Fires are banned above 9,600 feet because so much downed wood has been scavenged over the years and living trees have been hacked and scarred by axes. But the night was mild, with just a touch of frost on the ground in the morning. Light from the three-quarter moon danced across the Tuolumne high country. The moonlight was so bright that the stars retreated into the canopy of the night. But when the moon set sometime after 2 a.m., the Big Dipper seemed to flash across half the northern sky, its stars close enough for plucking.

The eastern sky began to lighten sometime after 4:30, and the first rays of the sun finally broke through the Tioga Pass cleft and reached Hoffmann’s summit at 5:45. Muir saw the first light of day on this site in 1869: “How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains! To behold this alone is worth the pains of any excursion a thousand times over.”

With gravity on my side, the morning hike down Mt. Hoffmann was easy. With the drought, there were none of the lingering snowbanks that often cling to shady mountain flanks throughout the summer. But inexplicably, almost near the base of the peak and not far above May Lake, there was a patch of snow perhaps five feet square. For a few brief yards, the trail was moist and bordered with greenery and bright wildflowers.

For all the change in California in the past century, with more than 20 million people now living within a single day’s drive, the Yosemite high country remains a fine wilderness island, a place where it still is possible to do as Muir urged so long ago: “Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.”