64 years ago: 'Junebug' snow on Mount Le Conte

* In the reference to Crossville, remember that in 1956, Alaska was not yet a state.

 LeConte Lodge posts weather records in the office that date back to 1978. The latest snow on those charts is flurries on June 1, 1983. While researching old-time hikers, I found this reference to snow on June 2, 1956, in the Knoxville-News Sentinel. This clipping was in a year-end wrap-up of wacky news.

Spring snow is not uncommon. May 9 was the seventh time since 1978 that Le Conte Lodge has had snow on the ground on Mothers Day weekend. The biggest snow ever in North Carolina was May 5-9, 1992: close to 50 inches on Mount Pisgah and 30 on Mount Mitchell. The same storm left 3 inches on Le Conte, 28 years ago on May 9. Le Conte also got 5 inches of snow on May 6, 2016.
 On June 15, 2020, the temperature dipped to 34 and the Lodge received close to an inch of hail. 

➤Here is a link for weather at 2,010 meters (6,593 feet) atop Mount Le Conte. 

The glorious dawn of the post-quarantine era

Even after a plague, the son always rises (Photo by Up'N'Adam Adventures)

 When the Great Smoky Mountains National Park reopened May 9 following the COVID-19 shutdown, no one was surprised that the first men on the mountaintop were named Adam—Adam Gravett on his 63rd lifetime climb; Adam Williamson, 44th; Adam Ozment, 40th; along with "honorary Adam" Chris Maulden, 59th. They climbed by moonlight to Myrtle Point, defying two inches of crusty snow, to witness the first sunrise after the quarantine. Maulden and Ozment were also there for the first sunrise of 2020. 

Playing it cool: Gravett, Ozment, Williamson

 Ozment and Maulden each have made five sunrise trips to Myrtle Point this year. Ozment wins the tiebreaker for the early bird award, based on this even more auspicious sunrise at Max Patch. 
 Also on opening day, Dr. Ed Jones made his 422nd climb, ranking 15th on our honor roll. On May 10, Timothy Massey logged #60, Philip Clarkson #59, and Melissa Coatney #26. Clarkson, the winter caretaker at the Lodge, is the 2020 leader with 12 climbs. Massey is halfway to his goal of #20for2020. Coatney, now up to #27, is aiming for #100 by the Lodge's 100th anniversary.
 On May 11, the llamas made their first trip since the quarantine.  I'm assuming they were led by Alan Householder, who ranks in our Top 5 with more than 1,200 climbs.
 Le Conte Lodge officially reopened May 18 after an eight-week shutdown. Social distancing has changed the experience―for example, meals are being served in cabins, rather than the traditional family-style dinner and breakfast in the dining room. Here is a description of the changes.

It was a mild winter by Le Conte standards

Several of Le Conte's most relentless climbers braved knee-deep snow for this rare Leap Day photo-op, including Adam Gravett #62, Timothy Massey #57, Chris Maulden #57, Philip Clarkson #55, and Adam Ozment #39. (Photo by Adam Gravett)

3.5 degrees on Leap Day (photo by Chris Maulden)

 Spring arrived early—Thursday, March 19, thanks to the extra Leap Day—to end a mild winter atop Mount Le Conte.

 Snowfall was unusually light. Blame mist opportunities: Winter brought 40 inches of rain—enough to make 30 feet of powder. Had it been colder, we might have broken the 2000 record of 164 inches of snow. Average snowfall is 82 inches, but this past winter saw just 39.9 inches. 
 Since the start of spring, another 11 inches of snow has been measured at the Lodge, bringing the total to 51.1 inches. That included two inches on Mother's Day weekend—the seventh time since 1978 Le Conte has had snow on Mothers Day.

 This past winter was the first time Le Conte Lodge has not had a sub-zero night, according to 42 years of weather records. The coldest temperature in 2020 was 2.4 degrees Fahrenheit on the night of Jan. 21. That was the 35th anniversary of the alltime-record of minus-32 in 1985.

➤Here is a link for weather at 2,010 meters atop Mount Le Conte. 

Wrapping February in a 10-inch blanket (photo by Adam Gravett)

'Grand finale' for grandfathered reservations

The first snow of the season fell Halloween night at LeConte Lodge. That's more than a month later than the record for the earliest snow: Sept. 24 in 1985. This was the 9th time in the last 11 years that the first snow has come in October. (Photo credit: highonleconte.com)

 There have been plenty of nostalgic comments in the LeConte Lodge logbook in recent weeks from hikers who may have been making their last overnight stays at the Lodge.
 Many of these guests have enjoyed standing or "grandfathered" reservations, which allowed those who have been coming since 1998 to carry over the same date from one year to the next, without going through the annual lottery and waiting list. This made it convenient for families and groups to schedule annual trips, but it also meant that a third of the season might fill up even before the general public had an opportunity to request reservations.
 For the past several years, the managers of the Lodge and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park have been working together to phase out the standing reservations, according to this report on WVLT-TV.
 In theory, the end of standing reservations should make it easier for first-time visitors to get a cabin, although the Lodge is already fully booked for 2020. The 2020 season runs eight months, opening March 23 and closing Nov. 24. 

 "Last trip," wrote Rick Hobson of Hilton Head, S.C., as he signed in Oct. 20 on his 36th visit to the Lodge. "Thank you all!"

 "Last year for reservations!" wrote Aaron and David Cain on Oct. 20 as they logged trips #20 and #32. "Been a great run!" 
 Norm Harber signed in Oct. 3 with #32. "Last group hike," he wrote. "Started in 1992. Been amazing!" 
 The Williams family signed in Nov. 9 with #20, "Last of the grandfathered years😞." 
 A group from St. John's Episcopal Church (evidently in South Carolina) signed in Oct. 25 with a note indicating they have been coming since 1964. "End of a wonderful tradition," wrote Margaret Anne Dubose, making her 17th trip. 
 Aimee Bridges of Raleigh, N.C., signed in Oct. 19 with "24 years!" Three days later, Dawn Eipeldauer of Oak Ridge, Tenn., left a note saying, "50 years. Love!" 
 The Fleming family—Dwight, Laura, Barrett, and Margaret—logged in Oct. 12 with #38, and wrote, "The grand finale!"
 Standing reservations date back to the 1980s, according to this 1989 clipping I found in the Raleigh News & Observer. At that time, standing reservations filled one-third of the season. By 1998, according to a story in the Cincinnati Enquirer, half of all guests came with standing reservations.

Remembering the hottest days ever on Le Conte

 The recent 100-degree heat wave across the South is a reminder that for decades, the thermometer at LeConte Lodge never topped 80 degrees Fahrenheit. (Grace McNicol's journal from 1983 mentions that the record high was 80 "years ago.")
 Then on June 29, 2012, this happened: 

 The next day, it hit 81.5. It was too hot for the llamas to work, so a helicopter had to be used to get fresh supplies to the Lodge. 
 With deference to global warming, I'm glad to report that the mountaintop hasn't come close to 80 since 2012. Over the past seven years, the high has been 77 in the summer of 2019.
 In case you are wondering, the all-time lows are minus-32 in January 1985, minus-26 in 1982 and 1983, and minus-24 in 2015.
 Here are the weather records from LeConte Lodge:

The unstoppable Dinwiddies of Le Conte

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.

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. 

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."