Monday, September 25, 2017

Moses of the Mountain: #174 on his 93rd birthday

'Moses of the Mountains'
Rev. Morgan's portrait at St. Francis Church in Cherokee, N.C.

 Who is the oldest person to climb Mount Le Conte? 
 If you've read Emilie Ervin Powell's book Gracie and the Mountain, you might think it's a tie between Rev. Rufus Morgan, an Episcopal priest who made his 172nd hike on his 92nd birthday in 1977, and Gracie McNicol, a retired nurse who logged her 244th trip on her 92nd birthday in 1983. 
     But it turns out that Rev. Morgan didn't stop at 92. I found this cleverly headlined clipping in the December 1978 issue of the The Communicant (the monthly newspaper of the N.C. Episcopal diocese), verifying that he climbed Le Conte two more times, including his 174th and final trip on his 93rd birthday, Sunday, Oct. 15, 1978.



 McNicol evidently didn't know this when she visited Morgan's cabin on Sept. 26, 1982, when he was 96 and she was about to turn 91. "I told him I was going to match his record of climbing Le Conte at age 92 next year," she said, according to a conversation recorded in Powell's book.
 If she didn't realize his record was 93, he was too much of a gentleman to correct her. Rather than debate facts, he gently kidded her for counting trips on horseback. "He said that I am never going to match his hiking record if I don't stop riding a horse up," she said. 
Rev. Morgan died the following February at age 97, and Gracie pressed onward toward her goal. She rode horses up the Rainbow Falls trail six times in 1983, and on Oct. 1 she celebrated her 92nd birthday at Le Conte Lodge. By then she had developed vertigo, and her doctor convinced her to not attempt the summit again. (About the same time, the trail was closed to horses.) Gracie was just three weeks short of her 100th birthday when she died in 1991. 
 I found a 1989 story in the Atlanta Journal Constitution where Gracie, at age 97, wanted to try to ride up one more time. But her doctor nixed the idea.
Rev. Morgan climbed Le Conte for 50 years starting in 1928, six years before the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was established. At 93, he still had the stamina to hike, but he was almost blind and needed a guide. The 1978 clipping points out that he carried his own pack, kept a steady pace, and stopped only for lunch on his way up the seven-mile Trillium Gap Trail.
"I've hiked a million miles in my life, I reckon," he told the church newspaper. That was just a figure of speech, but he certainly walked over 2,000 miles on the slopes of Le Conte.
And Le Conte was not the only place Rev. Morgan walked. He also frequented Albert Mountain and Siler Bald—mountains named for his grandfather and great-uncle. While in college, he once walked from Vermont to Boston217 miles in five days. He singlehandedly maintained 55 miles of the Appalachian Trail through the Nantahala Mountains. Friends called him "Moses of the Mountains."
 Here is a 1979 story about Rev. Morgan written by Nancy Brower for the Asheville Times.

SPEAKING OF OLD-TIMERS: The Bible tells us that Moses was 80 when he ascended Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments and was still climbing at 120 when he died on Mount Nebo at "the top of Pisgah" (Deuteronomy 34:1). Morgan and McNicol would have agreed that climbing helped keep Moses spry: "His eyes were not dim nor his natural vigor diminished" (34:7).

Pop goes the record? 

If anyone has approached Rev. Morgan's record, it is probably James "Pop" Hollandsworth (1915-2013). For more than 35 years, he led memorial hikes for Dr. Charles Lindsley, who died in January 1971 in a fall from Grassy Slide near the top of the Alum Cave Bluff trail. As far as I know, the last time he led the Lindsley hike was at age 92 in 2008—but I wouldn't be surprised if he returned later. If you have any details on his Le Conte hikes, please leave a comment. A World War II veteran, Pop was the founder of the mountaineering program at Asheville School and was also the first director of the North Carolina Outward Bound program.
Other nonagenarians have climbed Le Conte. When I met 95-year-old Dr. John Adler in July 2016, he said he last climbed Le Conte "about two years ago," which would have been age 92 or 93. But he did not recall the exact date. 
In a 1940 newspaper column, Ernie Pyle mentioned a 94-year-old man and an 83-year-old woman who hiked up. Unfortunately, Pyle did not record his name for posterity.
This 1969 photo from Joe Schlatter's Le Conte website shows another old-timer remembered only as "Cousin Joe." According to Joe Schlatter's brother John, who worked for Herrick Brown at the lodge that summer, "He was from South Carolina, was around 90 years old, and was blind.  He hiked with a friend, maybe his doctor, keeping a hand on the friend's shoulder." John Schlatter also pointed out that one of the hikers seated next to the cabin in the background is none other than Rev. Rufus Morgan, who would have been 83 that summer.
Lenore Gundy Costello of Lake Alfred, Fla., celebrated her 90th birthday by climbing Le Conte in 2006, according to a newspaper account celebrating her 103rd birthday.
 Navy veteran Dick McAliley of Acworth, Ga., celebrated his 85th and final birthday at the lodge in 2013. He climbed Le Conte 23 times, the last five after he recovered from a stroke in 2008.
 Before the lodge was built, a Knoxville florist named Charles Baum claimed to be the oldest to reach the summit. He nailed a copper can to a tree to hold a climbers' logbook, where he wrote, "This book was placed on top of Le Conte Mountain for records on June 6, 1922, by C.L. Baum, at this time said to be the oldest man to climb to the top, age 61." (The date may be incorrect, because Baum's gravestone indicates he actually would have been 59 in 1922.)

3 comments:

  1. Emilie Ervin Powell, the author of Gracie McNicol's biography, was also a fairly frequent climber of Le Conte. Notes on her book indicate that she climbed Le Conte for the first time in 1956 and the ninth time in 1977. It's obvious from the book that she also accompanied Gracie on additional hikes, including #244 in 1983.

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  2. Robert Peurifoy commented on Facebook:
    I climbed Mt. LeConte with the late Rufus Morgan. He was in his late 80's and blind. Had a hard time keeping up with him. He was the original trail marker for the trail from Georgia to Fontana. I was privileged to help prepare his Trail Hall of fame memorial.

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