t Hoffman, spend the night
on the summit, next morning go down by May Lake to Tenaya Lake and
return to the Valley by Cloud's Rest and the Nevada and Vernal Falls. As
on the foregoing excursion, you leave the Valley by the Yosemite Falls
trail and follow it to the Tioga wagon-road, a short distance east of
Porcupine Flat. From that point push straight up to the summit. Mount
Hoffman is a mass of gray granite that rises almost in the center of the
Yosemite Park, about eight or ten miles in a straight line from the
Valley. Its southern slopes are low and easily climbed, and adorned here
and there with castle-like crumbling piles and long jagged crests that
look like artificial masonry; but on the north side it is abruptly
precipitous and banked with lasting snow. Most of the broad summit
is comparatively level and thick sown with crystals, quartz, mica,
hornblende, feldspar, granite, zircon, tourmaline, etc., weathered out
and strewn closely and loosely as if they had been sown broadcast. Their
radiance is fairly dazzling in sunlight, almost hiding the multitude of
small flowers that grow among them. At first sight only these radiant
crystals are likely to be noticed, but looking closely you discover a
multitude of very small gilias, phloxes, mimulus, etc., many of them
with more petals than leaves. On the borders of little streams larger
plants flourish--lupines, daisies, asters, goldenrods, hairbell,
mountain columbine, potentilla, astragalus and a few gentians; with
charming heathworts--bryanthus, cassiope, kalmia, vaccinium in
boulder-fringing rings or bank covers. You saunter among the crystals
and flowers as if you were walking among stars. From the summit nearly
all the Yosemite Park is displayed like a map: forests, lakes, meadows,
and snowy peaks. Northward lies Yosemite's wide basin with its domes and
small lakes, shining like larger crystals; eastward the rocky, meadowy
Tuolumne region, bounded by its snowy peaks in glorious array; southward
Yosemite and westward the vast forest. On no other Yosemite Park
mountain are you more likely to linger. You will find it a magnificent
sky camp. Clumps of dwarf pine and mountain hemlock will furnish resin
roots and branches for fuel and light, and the rills, sparkling water.
Thousands of the little plant people will gaze at your camp-fire with
the crystals and stars, companions and guardians as you lie at rest in
the heart of the vast serene night.

The most telling of al