Distance: 6.2 miles round trip on trail and cross country
Summit Elevation: 10850'
Prominence: 2290'
Elevation Gain: 2000'
Elevation Gain (in Empire State Buildings): 1.6
Round trip time: 5 hours
Recommended water: 80 oz.
Parking/Fees: $35 National Parks Fee (good for one week)
Difficulty: Moderate
At the end of our first full day in Yosemite, I was feeling bad enough to punt on Hoffmann. However, the next morning, I felt well enough for the attempt. It took a little over an hour to drive out of the Valley to the May Lake Trailhead. Nice weather was holding up. We arrived at May Lake in less than an hour and got some mirror shots in the still water of Hoffmann's battlements. The summit is about a half mile behind the battlements so is not visible from the lake. I was expecting to go cross country from the lake, but there was a good trail leading around the lake, up a ramp to get past the lower cliffs. The trail made a hard right toward the cliff on a slab and was easy to lose. We marched right by it, then scrambled 100' up the end of the ramp and bumped into the trail again. The second part of the hike was up rocky class 1 terrain to the left (west) of the battlements. There were multiple braided use trails but it doesn't make much difference how you tackle this part.
The last section of the hike was across an upward sloping plateau where the trail was defined and easy. The trail ended below the summit rocks consisting of pancaked slabs. We arrived at the base of the summit the same time as another couple. They both wore tennis shoes and didn't look like regular hikers. When we started up, the male decided to wait at the bottom while the female followed us up the slabs. That is, until the final 20' of class 3, just below the summit. The female looked at our route, didn't like it, hunted around for a another way for 10 minutes, then gave up. So close. The views from the top were stellar and there was a shear drop on the north side, something not obvious from the topo. The benchmark was intact and I found a reference mark nearby. Some kind of antennae or relay sprang from the summit, but it had no markings that gave away its purpose. We looked down the south ridge to Hoffmann's Thumb, but it clearly required rope protection and was not in the cards today. The fancy aluminum register box that used to be on Hoffmann was moved to the Thumb. No other register was found. The view of Clouds Rest and Half Dome were notable. We ate lunch on the summit and I could have been happy there a long time. Eventually, we packed up and returned, able to follow the trail all the way back. Hoffmann was delightful and definitely worth the half day investment.
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