May Lake and Mount Hoffmann

Usually I use my Saturday for laundry, errands, and r&r…but since it dawned on me that I only have a little over a month left here, I decided that there was still a lot to see! So adventure #2 for the weekend was up in Tuolumne. I decided to do a short hike and then catch the bus back down. Following another of Conor’s recommendations, I decided to go up to Mount Hoffmann and May Lake. Round trip from the trailhead was only about 6 miles, so I figured I wouldn’t have a problem catching the bus back since I had a 4.5 hour window.

I took the hiker’s bus up to the May Lake Junction. I hadn’t realized that the trailhead was an additional 2 miles from Tioga Road…putting my new total at 10 miles round trip—a little more interesting. I had no intention of hiking an additional ten miles back to the valley, so I decided to bust a move. I began my journey at 9:45.

The first two miles to the trailhead were almost entirely uphill, but on a paved road, so it wasn’t a problem at all. After I got to the trailhead, the trail became pretty sandy, and a little rocky.

An interesting side note: I saw tracks in the sand from what looked like a stroller or a wheelchair. Don’t get me wrong, this trail wasn’t bad, but in no way would I consider it handicap accessible! Sure enough, a little bit later I met three people, one of whom was in a wheelchair. A little bit later I met another group of people waiting that asked if I had recently passed the group with the wheelchair. Kudos to that entire group of ten-ish people for helping her experience Yosemite! I was thrilled by their perseverance and dedication. How awesome!

Anyways, the May Lake HSC that sits right by May Lake is only about 1 ¼ miles from the trailhead, so it makes this a very popular place. It took me about an hour to get there from Tioga Road. Then I headed on a trail SW of the lake up to Mount Hoffmann. The beginning of this trail is no problem at all. The further you go up, it gets harder to spot the trail cairns, even though they’re everywhere. There’s just so much rock! After you get up the majority of the rock, it turns into this pebble-y, semi-grassy area with a few rock formations. The trail cairns disappear and you’re on your own. If you’re like me, and you miss the first turnoff to the point I was trying to get to—you’ll keep on going straight until the trail divides and you’ll take a minor detour to scramble up a rock formation on your left until you realize that’s not where you want to be. Then you’ll come back down and head over across the trail to the other side and hope that’s where you want to be. Then as you climb up the rock formation that you wanted to be on in the first place, you’ll notice that there was a slight trail over there after all—you just happened to miss it. You’ll also realize that it’s already noon and you need to go down in like five minutes if you want to arrive at the bus pick-up in reasonable Bethany-time (aka 10-15 minutes early). Instead you spend 15 minutes on the rock formation because of your saying, “You’re Only Here Once.” (#YOHO) You also stumble upon that cool circle embedded in the rock that says fancy stuff about the mountain that you’re on. :)

 May Lake and Mount Hoffmann viewed from the May Lake HSC

If you look at the top left rock formation, that's where I climbed to. :)

 May Lake from the top of Mount Hoffmann

 View from the top of Mount Hoffmann

Half Dome in the distance! Check out my cool new sunglasses that I found in the free bin in our lounge! Sweet, right?

Okay, so now that it’s 12:15—it’s been 2.5 hours since the bus dropped me off and I have 2.25 hours until it strands me in Tuolumne. So I make my way down the rocks quickly, although I lost the trail and ended up just scrambling down until I found a cairn again. During this time, I also ate my pb&j—pretty sure that’s how I lost the trail. My brain always focuses on food! I book it back to the May Lake HSC and make a pit stop to drink water and go to the bathroom. Then, just like any normal person would do, I decide to trail run the last ~3.25 miles. For fun of course! It was pretty easy terrain for a trail (except for the rock that jumped out of the sand and almost made me biff it), and it was almost all flat or downhill. The only things holding me back were the wind and my darn too-heavy backpack. I ended up getting back to the May Lake Junction at Tioga Road at 1:40. Plenty of time… :D Just the way I like it.

Fun fact: Mount Hoffmann is the geographic center of Yosemite National Park.

 This is the little circle that I said I stumbled upon earlier. Pretty cool, pretty cool.