Thanks, Tim Line: 41 years serving us on Le Conte

Tim Line has been climbing Mount Le Conte even longer than the llamas, who have been supplying the Lodge since 1986. If it looks like Tim has horns, that's just the ears of the llama behind him.
(photo by Dr. Ed Jones)

 
 This is the 94th season for Le Conte Lodge, and for the past 41 years the team has always included Tim Line. But this spring as he turns 65, Tim has decided it's time to retire.
 “I’ve been doing this for a long time,” he told Morgan Simmons in a story published in Blue Ridge Outdoors magazine. “My knees are starting to wear out and my back hurts. I loved every minute of this job, but it’s time to let someone else take over.”
 Line estimates he has climbed Mount Le Conte 1,500 times, according to a profile in Smoky Mountain Living magazine. That's an average of once a week since the Lodge hired him as a cook in 1977. All those hikes cover more than 15,000 miles, which would span more than halfway around the world.
 As far as we know, only two men have climbed Le Conte more than Tim Line:

1. Ron Valentine, now in his 80s, has been hiking Le Conte regularly since 1946 and probably has made about 4,000 climbs. When Ed Wright wrote about his 1,310th and final climb in 2008, he asked Valentine to disclose his total: "My hearing is marginal at best, but I think that he said that he had made 798 hikes to Le Conte since January 1, 2000. I think that he said that he had about 3,000 hikes before that. I asked him when he was going to come clean and tell the world of his accomplishments. He replied that he would give the number after I died. I told him that I was not half dead yet."
2. Jack Huff, like Line, managed the Lodge for over three decades (1926-59) and probably made between 2,000 and 3,000 hikes in his lifetime. He stopped counting hikes after he reached 1,000 in 1937 and was probably near 2,000 by 1948. We estimate his lifetime total at 2,500, considering that he climbed less frequently after he took over his father's Gatlinburg motel in 1949. His wife Pauline continued as the site manager for the Lodge through 1959. I've added her to our honor roll, since she surely made more than 100 climbs in 25 years. The Huffs were married at Myrtle Point in 1934—this past Sunday would have been their 84th anniversary. 

 Tim Line met his wife Lisa on Mount Le Conte, and they home-schooled their children there. Daughter Gracie is named for Gracie McNicol, who once claimed the Le Conte record with 244 ascents. Son Jacob is now part of the Lodge crew.

 Tim Line once ran down the 5-mile Alum Cave Bluff Trail in 33 minutes, setting an unofficial record that stood until 2012, when John Northrup galloped down in 26 minutes. So it's appropriate that Northrup is the man who will be following Line's footsteps as the Lodge's new manager. Northrup has worked for Line for nine years and has been climbing Le Conte since before he was born: His first ascent was when his mom Pat was 5½ months pregnant.
 Between day hikers and overnighters, close to a million guests have visited Le Conte Lodge during Line's tenure. (That includes me, five times through 2019). On behalf of all of us, thank you, Tim! It's all downhill from here.