Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Mts. Dana and Gibbs, 11-3-07

My Pop was driving home after a little moving assistance last Saturday, and since Tioga was still open, he decided to head out thru Yosemite. So, after breakfast at Nicely's we caravaned up to Tioga Pass, and after our goodbyes, I headed out to play.

Almost a Piotrowski start (9:20 a.m.), and basically cruised up the use trail. I was on top by 11:35, not bad for 3K vf! It was a gorgeous, breezy day, clear views in all directions. It's a lot shorter distance than I thought, but steep, somewhat loose rock getting up there. No snow to speak of.

After a nice lunch on the summit, and a good look at the Dana Coloir (I still can't believe I started thinking... hmmmm... that looks like fun!!), I headed down the south side to the saddle. It's a 1200 ft loss, then a nice 1000ft climb back up to Gibbs along a gorgeous ridge and a Class 2 face. Whatever snow was on the north side could be brushed or blown away, plenty of holds all around.

The descent from Gibbs was along the long west ridge and thru the forest, instead of dropping south to the Mono Pass Trail. After crossing Dana Creek, I found an old log cabin sitting alone in the forest. Did Shorty get this far north, I wonder? Kept the sun at 10 o'clock and finally caught the trail about 1/4 mile from the road. Got most of the way back to the TOF before a kindly family picked up the scary woman hitchiker for the last 1/2 mile or so.

A gorgeous day, to be sure, and a great way to get started exploring my new home!

-L

Shorty Lovelace

On March 4, 1940, Congress created Kings Canyon National Park. This effectively put Shorty Lovelace out of business.

Joseph Walter (Shorty) Lovelace was born in 1886 on his fathers homestead above Three Rivers, California. Shorty grew up in the mountains, exploring and hunting. He attended the eight grades offered at the Sulfur Springs School in Three Rivers. He became a mechanic in Visalia, but the call of the mountains was ever present. By 1920, Shorty built a cabin at Crowley Canyon near Comanche Meadow and trapped the surrounding area.

Trapping had to be done in the winter months when the pelts of wolverine, fisher and marten were at their best. The season began in late November and lasted until the spring thaw in March. During this period, Shorty had to survive in a very harsh environment without assistance. It was common for a storm to deposit five feet of snow at one time. Temperatures below zero, avalanches, falling trees and ice were ever present.

Prices for these pelts in the 1920's
Pelt Price
Fisher $45.00
Wolverine $25.00-$30.00
Marten $15.00
Mountain Lion $8.00
Bear $8.00



Lion and bear were not commonly found in the winter. Badger was popular but also not usually found. Beaver and otter were not found at all. Shorty had much better success than most trappers. The average trappers annual income was only $160 while Shorty's income would run as high as $2000.

Sparse animal population and deep snow required Shorty to travel beyond a one day trek, so he began to build additional cabins. These small shelters were always within a day of another and arranged in loops. Besides Crowley Canyon, he built cabins at Williams (Quartz) Meadow, Rowell Meadow, Kettle Peak, Ellis Meadow, Moraine Meadow, Cedar Grove, Granite Pass, Woods Creek, Upper Basin, Vidette Meadow and Cloud Canyon. It is believed that there were also shelters in Deadman and Ferguson Canyons, Big Meadows, Horse Corral Meadow, and Sphinx Creek. The cabins were built with whatever materials were available at the site. They usually measured six by ten feet and five and a half feet high. This not only required less work than a larger shelter, but was also easer to heat. Inside there would be a small bunk, a few shelves and a wood stove. Most of these cabins were built in the summer when it was not trapping season.

In the 1930's, a tree fell on his Granite Pass cabin, causing a fire which burned him out. He managed to escape with no broken bones, but suffered internal injuries. To survive he had to make his way to another cabin. Eventually, proceeding slowly along his chain of cabins, he covered the fifty miles through deep snow to Crowley Canyon. In March, a snow survey crew found him more dead than alive. He refused their offer to take him out and waited for the snow to melt and came out by himself.

Shorty traveled in the winter on homemade skis from trap line to trap line and from cabin to cabin. Winter was spent without seeing another human. His trapping range included almost the entire watershed of the South Fork of the Kings River. Topographically, this was one of the roughest areas in North America. From Crowley Canyon to Upper Basin was a distance by trail of over fifty miles with elevations from 4,600' to 12,000'. As the spring thaw ended the season, he headed to Visalia and cashed in his pelts. With his pockets filled with money, his annual spring drinking binge became well known. When the money ran out, he would head back to the mountains to build cabins, and make preparations for another winter.

With the creation of Kings Canyon National Park, Shorty was forced to move to the Helms Creek drainage near Sand Meadow. Working east from there, he built thirteen cabins to support his trapping activities. He trapped into the late 50's and had no official relationship with the Sierra Forest. He never applied for a trapping permit or a cabin permit. He withdrew in 1961 at the age of seventy-five. Two years later, he was dead.
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I'm not sure, from the description, that he had cabins that far north. However, there is a cabin down in the Golden Trout Wilderness, on the South Fork Lakes trail, that is virtually identical to Shorty cabins I've seen elsewhere, but I can't confirm who built it....so who knows?

I've always wondered about the height of those cabins. Being of Scots/Irish extraction, my explanation was that they were built by "the little people".

Only eight bucks for a bear pelt? Seems like an awful lot of work when you can get thirty for a wolverine

Nice hike Laura! I considered doing both peaks last time (several years ago), but decided we didn't have enough time. It takes about 4 hours to get to Tioga Pass from here.

We climbed Mt. Gibbs, then descended to the saddle and looked up at Dana, and decided to call it a day. We came across (probably) the same cabin, too, on our descent.

Here's a link to other cabin information. It mentions a cabin on "Dana Fork".
Yosemite’s Pioneer Cabins by Robert F. Uhte

Steve, that is a fascinating column on the cabins.

Now that I think of it, I know of a proven "Shorty cabin" (Chetwood Cabin) that is only about 10 miles away from the cabin that Laura described. I'm a little surprised that Shorty did not figure in Yosemite history, at all.

The cabin was definitely for the "little people". I think I might have been able to crawl thru the doorway... Maybe that's why he was "Shorty"??

Dave: Wolverines are worth a whole lot more than that! Go Blue!

Perhaps ... but only until they go on sale at the 4th annual blue-Lllloyd ...er, -light special, which sale starts at the Big House (a/k/a the Buckeyes' vacation home) this year on Nov. 17 at about 3:30 pm, Eastern Time... Preparations for the big sale begin around noon (ET) the same day. GO BUCKS!!

Ken: I spotted a cabin ruins off the trail between Moraine Lake and Sky Parlor Meadow, on the High Sierra Trail, this last summer. You mentioned one of his cabins being at Moraine Meadow. Is this the same cabin?




Norman

Norman, that looks similar to others I've seen, although the wood looks in very good shape for being that old.

Dry as a bone a few weeks ago:



I know it's a different story now, just with the move and getting back online it's taken me forever to get these pics up! Labels won't be on until next week, when the actual jacks get installed in the apartment! ACK!



The cabin I found out there.



Ice Crystals in the Dana Fork.

Pics are here.

Enjoy!

-L

Yep, that's the cabin I saw. I remember wondering why the doorway was so short. Must have been built with only survival in mind.

There are a couple of cabins west of Gibbs. If you had gone down the south ridge to Mono Pass you would have found a small village. Well a group of 5 old cabins and mines.

This is a great thread....it has morph'd into a "cabins in the Sierras." Maybe it's been done before, but it would be fun and interesting to see all the pictures of cabins and ruins in the backcountry of the Sierra Nevada.

Steve C. The doorways shorter on the left side, so that makes 'Shorty' a leaner? Me thinks the logs in contact with the earth have rotted away, not at a uniform rate. But still a very interesting pic. of an old trapper's 'cabin'.