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| David Dinwiddie (photo by WVLT-TV) |
Knoxville's WVLT-TV produced a nice "Tennessee Traveler" episode on David Dinwiddie, where he estimates he has climbed Mount Le Conte nearly 800 times.
The story doesn't say so, but "nearly 800" would mean that David, 76, has surpassed the record of his late father, Paul Dinwiddie (1915-1995), who climbed Le Conte 750 times from 1931 through 1993.
With David added to the Le Conte Log honor roll, we now have three men named Dinwiddie among our top nine.
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| Graham 'Cracker' Cooper |
Graham Dinwiddie Cooper Jr. (better known as Cracker) told Ed Wright in 1994 that he had climbed Le Conte about 1,000 times but did not have an exact count. Wright's and Paul Dinwiddie's journals tell us that Cooper continued to frequent the mountaintop at least eight more years through 2002. A farmer in Greenback, Tennessee, Cooper died at age 83 in 2013.
Paul Dinwiddie kept meticulous records. He made 706 of his 750 climbs after he turned 65, including 135 consecutive months he climbed the mountain. In 1991, at age 75, he climbed Le Conte 11 days in a row.
Paul and Graham were second cousins. In his journal, Paul explained that Cooper's grandfather married the sister of Paul's grandfather.
In the same era, Margaret Stevenson started climbing Le Conte at age 48 and finished with 718 climbs.
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| Gracie McNicol (left) claimed a record with her 244th ascent of LeConte on her 92nd birthday in 1983. Paul Dinwiddie (right) raised the record to 750 at age 78 in 1993. Ed Wright surpassed Paul Dinwiddie in 1995 and Graham Dinwiddie Cooper in 1997 on the way to his lifetime total of 1,310. (Photo by Dr. E.C. Jones) |
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(From the Knoxville News Sentinel, Dec. 24, 2004)
Keeping wits after fall helped hiker stay alive
Man who took shelter in sleeping bag kept life, but may lose fingers
By SCOTT BARKER
December 24, 2004
The snow was knee-deep on Inadu Knob.
Temperatures dropped below zero on the mountain, making David Dinwiddie's hands so stiff he couldn't prepare any food. For days snow was his sustenance and his only shelter was a down sleeping bag.
As the hours passed, he prayed that someone — anyone — would find him as he lay in the middle of the Appalachian Trail about 6,000 feet above sea level in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Dinwiddie's prayers were answered Tuesday evening when three hikers stumbled into the makeshift campground he'd fashioned after falling on the trail Sunday.
Frostbitten, hypothermic and a little disoriented, Dinwiddie had already spent two nights in the rugged mountains south of Cosby on the North Carolina border. His sleeping bag very nearly served as a burial shroud.
Seated in a wheelchair Thursday morning in an 11th-floor lounge at the University of Tennessee Medical Center, Dinwiddie recounted his harrowing backcountry experience.
"I knew I was going to get out," the 62-year-old veteran backpacker said less than 14 hours after being rescued by park rangers. "I just didn't know when."
His fingers were black and swollen from frostbite, his toes a dishwater gray. His speech was thick, and he sometimes had difficulty understanding questions. At his side sat Richard Butcher, who had accompanied Dinwiddie on many previous hikes.
"He's a survivor," Butcher said. "He's tough."
Dinwiddie's ordeal began on Sunday, when he hiked up the steep, 4.6-mile Snake Den Ridge Trail. His destination was the Tricorner Knob shelter, nearly 4 miles farther down the Appalachian Trail. He had planned to meet some friends from Florida at the shelter and trek with them to shelters at Cosby Knob and Davenport Gap.
Dinwiddie turned onto the Appalachian Trail. As he slogged through the 18-inch-deep snow and freezing wind, he lost his footing.
"I stepped on the trail and it gave way on me," he said.
Dinwiddie tumbled down and found himself entangled in branches. After more than an hour of struggling to free himself, Dinwiddie took off his gloves so he could remove his backpack. By the time he wriggled out, his hands were frozen.
Dinwiddie decided not to risk hiking out. After all, he was only a short distance from his destination, where friends presumably were waiting on him. He crawled into his sleeping bag to warm up. Because he'd planned to stay in shelters, he didn't pack a tent.
Unbeknownst to Dinwiddie, his Florida friends had cut short their trip because of the snow and swirling winds in the high Smokies. He was alone on the mountain.
The temperature plunged. On Mount LeConte, 12 miles away as the raven flies from Dinwiddie's perch and less than 300 feet higher in elevation, the thermometer read 11 degrees below zero on Monday.
Dinwiddie stared up at the stars, which hung like shards of shaved ice in the clear mountain skies.
"I just looked at 'em and looked at 'em till it turned daylight again," Dinwiddie said.
He knew he couldn't fall asleep. When a person suffers from hypothermia, sleep is little more than the first phase of death.
"I didn't panic," Dinwiddie said. "I didn't get scared. I talked myself into not going to sleep."
An Operation Desert Storm veteran, Dinwiddie said his military training had taught him how to stay awake for long periods of time. He needed that training as the hours stretched into days.
Dinwiddie carried plenty of food, but his frozen fingers couldn't open the packaging. His camping stove was useless.
Instead, he would form snowballs, put them into his mouth and let them melt so he could stay hydrated. The only solids he consumed were evergreen needles and dirt embedded in the snow. Preparing the snowballs further exposed his already damaged fingers.
On Tuesday morning, with temperatures warming into the 20s, he dug out his cell phone and managed to call a Sevier County 911 operator, who relayed the call to the National Park Service switchboard.
The call was garbled. The 911 system, the Park Service and the phone company determined he was in the northeastern portion of the park, but couldn't pinpoint the location.
That evening, a trio of hikers came upon Dinwiddie's sleeping bag in the darkness. They hustled down the mountain and notified park personnel.
Three rangers — Pat Patten, Gene Wesloh and Joe Pond — headed for the trailhead about 5:30 a.m. on Wednesday. Four hours later, they were at Dinwiddie's side. Pond, who's also a medic, assessed Dinwiddie's condition. His body temperature had plunged to 94 degrees.
The rangers hustled Dinwiddie out of his soggy sleeping bag and into a hastily erected tent. After changing him into some dry clothes, they made him drink hot chocolate, both for sustenance and to raise his core temperature.
Chief Ranger Jim Northup said Dinwiddie would have died had he not kept his wits about him after his fall.
"He certainly did the right thing by getting into the sleeping bag," Northup said.
More than two dozen people joined in the rescue effort. The state park system sent eight rangers to augment the National Park Service rescue team. A group arrived at the tent with a litter.
Fighting a ferocious storm, the rescuers placed Dinwiddie onto the litter and dragged him down the trail.
"We were actually able to slide him on the snow to the top of the Snake Den Ridge trail on Maddron Bald," Northup said.
When the snow cover petered out, the rangers transferred Dinwiddie to a more nimble litter outfitted with a wheel and brakes.
Bob Fulcher, manager of the Cumberland Trail State Park, was a member of the fourth and final team that went up the mountain late Wednesday afternoon to help bring Dinwiddie down in the teeth of the storm.
"It was incredible weather — winds gusting to 60 miles an hour, with sleet, mist and snow flying sideways, depending on the elevation," Fulcher said.
"He would groan in pain and let you know he was hurt," Fulcher continued. "This guy had been lying in the snow for three days. The fact that he was partially lucid is amazing."
The rangers got Dinwiddie down about 9:30 p.m. as wind and rain lashed the mountaintops. On Cove Mountain, the Park Service recorded the highest wind speeds ever in the Smokies — 110 mph.
Dinwiddie said he would have died had he remained on the mountain. As it is, he might emerge from the hospital maimed. Doctors have told him he may lose some of his fingers.
Holding his blackened, trembling hands before him, Dinwiddie said, "I can't move any of these fingers at all."
A planned hike to Spence Field next week, a New Year's ritual for Dinwiddie, will have to be cancelled for only the second time in 37 years. But Dinwiddie said he would return to the mountains as soon as he recovers. The Smokies are in his blood.
His father, the late Paul Dinwiddie, hiked Mount LeConte 750 times between his 65th birthday and his death in 1995 at age 80. Like his father, Dinwiddie spends much of his time in the mountains and has helped his share of hikers in trouble.
"I've helped a lot of people out of them mountains," he said. "I didn't think I'd be one of them someday."
