Larry Russell #199 and #200: A double slice of cake

LeConte Lodge cook Heather Barker presents a cake to Larry Russell. (Photo from highonleconte.com)

 
 Congratulations to Larry Russell, who climbed the Alum Cave Bluff Trail twice on Wednesday, July 18, to join the exclusive list of hikers who have 200 ascents of Mount Le Conte. Larry is just the 26th person in our records (21 men and five women) to reach that threshold. 
 The milestone was celebrated by the staff at Le Conte Lodge and announced in a post on the Lodge blog: "All of our crew are always excited to see Larry when he makes his trip up (not just because of the treats he brings us). Great job Larry and here's to 200 more!"
 Russell is a retired policeman from Covington, Tennessee, who now lives in Sevierville. He also climbed Le Conte twice in a day back on Aug. 7, 2014, to mark his 99th and 100th ascents. He wrote on Facebook: "I will continue hiking that mountain as long as I'm able, but I don't think I will hike it twice in one day again. A couple of my hiking buddies said I should hike it three times when I get to 300. These are the same ones that said I need to get married, so I don't pay much attention to their advice."
 Larry is making steady progress toward 300. On May 12, 2019, he signed in at the Lodge with #226. 

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Going the extra miles: Beyond the Tour de Le Conte

 The 44-mile Tour de Le Conte is not the only ultramarathon on the mountain. Others have tried to see how many round trips they could turn on the 5-mile Alum Cave Bluff Trail.
 As far as I know, the one-day record is 6.5 laps—that's 65 miles—by John Northrup in 2012. He works at LeConte Lodge, so I presume he started at the top and made seven trips down and six up. The previous year, he made five round trips for 50 miles in 17 hours.
 His mileage surpassed Stan Wullschleger, who made six round trips, or 60 miles, on September 28, 2007, according to Ed Wright's book. Wright called Wullschleger "Stan the running man."
 David Worth, who held the fastest known time for the Tour de Le Conte (44 miles in 10:03:41) and the Appalachian Trail through the Smokies (72 miles in 14:50:22), tried running the Alum Cave trail on his birthday in 2011 but blew out his candles after 5.5 laps for 55 miles. When his wife Caitlin offered to run another lap with him, he declined:

"I told her I would only go up again if someone paid me a thousand dollars. She said she wasn't going to, and there was no one else around to ask, so we slowly made our way back to the trailhead. I had a great time up until the last hour or so on the trail, then it just wasn't fun anymore. I had already spent an entire day hiking and running my favorite trail with some of my favorite people, there was no motivation to go back."

 Before Wullschleger, Bill Sharp of Andersonville, Tennessee, held the one-day record of four climbs totaling 41.6 miles on June 1, 1992. (The extra mileage suggests that he probably went all the way to High Top instead of stopping at the Lodge). Sharp ranks highly on our honor roll, climbing Le Conte 270 times before he stopped counting hikes in 1994.
 Wright himself often climbed Alum Cave two or three times in a day, especially in 1991 when he turned 66 and set the one-year record of 230 climbs. In his lifetime total of 1,310 ascents, there were three days he made three round trips and 125 days he climbed the mountain twice.

This snapshot from Ed Wright's website shows Wright's 500th climb on May 6, 1992, with  Paul Dinwiddie (#727), Margaret Stevenson (#527), and reporter Piper Lowell from Wright's hometown newspaper in Oak Ridge, Tenn.