High Sierra Topix

I had planned on exiting Kern canyon that way in 2015, but opted to go up the headwater instead.

Cross Country wrote:So - I take it that no one has hiked down Tyndall Creek below Shepherd Pass on the Mount Whitney Quad except for me (on HST).

I was down the Tyndall Creek drainage last Sept, but I didn't go all the way down to the JMT/PCT. I crossed over Rockwell Pass from the Wright Lakes Basin..

We did that too but on our return from the Kern River and from Wallace and Wales.

Memory is always hazy, but I'm pretty sure the cabin just below Tyndall RS on Tyndall Creek is not a Shorty cabin -- old sheepherder or something. There's another one lower down which, I think, was the powder cabin when the trail (John Dean cutoff) was being built.

There's a shorty cabin in Lake Basin, Gardiner, Vidette, just above Woods Creek on JMT (a pile of logs is all that's left), both sides of Avalanche Pass and in Roaring River (though I've not visited that one -- maybe not found?). There was one near Bubbs/Avalanche trail junction, but it burned down decades ago. If you can't find Tweed's book (which just ought to be published online -- it's short and very interesting) Shorty was a trapper in the 30s before Kings became a park. He had to have been a truly gnarly mountaineer to get around in winter in that terrain AND stay there all winter trapping. When it became a park and he wasn't allowed to trap, he supposedly headed north out of Florence/Woodchuck country though I'm less sure of that.

A very serious drinker. When he came out for the spring and sold his pelts, the story is his brother would hold his money otherwise he'd drink it all away pretty quick. He was, of course, pretty short and the beds and doors he built reflect that. One thing I've always wanted to know is the counts of the animals he took. I think the decline of the Fisher and Wolverine in the park can be attributed to his (and other's) trapping.