l the wide Hoffman views is the basin of the
Tuolumne with its meadows, forests and hundreds of smooth rock-waves
that appear to be coming rolling on towards you like high heaving waves
ready to break, and beyond these the great mountains. But best of all
are the dawn and the sunrise. No mountain top could be better placed for
this most glorious of mountain views--to watch and see the deepening
colors of the dawn and the sunbeams streaming through the snowy High
Sierra passes, awakening the lakes and crystals, the chilled plant
people and winged people, and making everything shine and sing in
pure glory.

With your heart aglow, spangling Lake Tenaya and Lake May will beckon
you away for walks on their ice-burnished shores. Leave Tenaya at the
west end, cross to the south side of the outlet, and gradually work
your way up in an almost straight south direction to the summit of the
divide between Tenaya Creek and the main upper Merced River or Nevada
Creek and follow the divide to Clouds Rest. After a glorious view from
the crest of this lofty granite wave you will find a trail on its
western end that will lead you down past Nevada and Vernal Falls to the
Valley in good time, provided you left your Hoffman sky camp early.

Two-Day Excursions

No. 2.

Another grand two-day excursion is the same as the first of the one-day
trips, as far as the head of Illilouette Fall. From there trace the
beautiful stream up through the heart of its magnificent forests and
gardens to the canyons between the Red and Merced Peaks, and pass the
night where I camped forty-one years ago. Early next morning visit
the small glacier on the north side of Merced Peak, the first of the
sixty-five that I discovered in the Sierra.

Glacial phenomena in the Illilouette Basin are on the grandest scale,
and in the course of my explorations I found that the canyon and
moraines between the Merced and Red Mountains were the most interesting
of them all. The path of the vanished glacier shone in many places as
if washed with silver, and pushing up the canyon on this bright road
I passed lake after lake in solid basins of granite and many a meadow
along the canyon stream that links them together. The main lateral
moraines that bound the view below the canyon are from a hundred to
nearly two hundred feet high and wonderfully regular, like artificial
embankments covered with a magnificent growth of silver fir and pine.
But this garden and forest luxurianc