33.5 miles of hiking • 6000' elevation gain • 2 nights
We started from the Road's End TH in King's Canyon NP around 9am Saturday morning. Most backpackers along our route were hiking the Rae Lakes Loop, but we had a different goal in mind; Shorty Lovelace's cabin in Vidette Meadow.
From the National Register of Historic Places Nomination (1977):
"Joseph Walter ("Shorty") Lovelace, 1886-1963, spent most of his life fur trapping in the Sierra Nevada. Beginning in 1910 and ending about 1940, when Kings Canyon National Park was created, Shorty trapped the watershed of the South Fork of the Kings River. As a necessary adjunct to this trapping, he established a system of small cabins and shelters which may have numbered as many as thirty-six." Shorty's cabin at Vidette Meadow is one of two cabins restored and maintained by the forest service.
The trail from Road's End to Vidette Meadow follows Bubbs Creek. We camped the first night near Lower Vidette Meadow, and the second night near Charlotte Creek.
*Solomon Quest GTX #1
