Mike Maples #75: Godspeed to our 'Mountain Jedi'

Mike Maples (in hooded jacket) on one of his last trips to Le Conte.
Click here to see his video of the hike.

 When I started this blog in 2016, I emailed Mike Maples and asked him to help me identify hikers who have climbed Mount Le Conte at least 100 times. Knowing how often he hiked, I suspected he might be among them. "I've not been up there that many times," he responded. "Maybe 35 to 40 times over the years."

 As usual, Mike was being modest. I found an old logbook where he  signed in with 75. 
 Mike gave me some helpful hints, like he did for so many hikers who sought his wisdom, perspective, or guidance. Friends called him "the mountain Jedi" for his knowledge of the Great Smoky Mountains, her trails, and relics. Mike was less obsessed with the mountaintops than he was with the families and communities who once lived in the hollows below. He wrote several books about the Smokies.
 For the past few months, Mike has been fighting cancer, and on the morning of Tuesday, March 5, at age 66, he passed from this life. He was an expert on cemeteries in the Park and was buried March 10 at the Huskey Cemetery east of Gatlinburg. 
 Fellow hikers have been posting remembrances. "You touched more people than you will ever know," Brian Brubaker said. "We lost a great park ambassador, historian, story teller and all around great person today. You will be sorely missed. Rest easy my friend."
 Philip Clarkson: "The Smokies lost a great friend today! You were the most interesting person I had the pleasure of meeting. You had so many stories about our beloved mountains!"

—Tom Layton

Carlos Campbell ~120: A visionary for the Park

Many of us caught our first glimpse of the majestic heights of Mount Le Conte
from the Carlos Campbell Overlook on Highway 441 south of Gatlinburg.

A giant of the national park:
 Carlos Campbell

 Carlos Campbell (1892-1978) was one of the founding fathers of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and I knew that he climbed Le Conte frequently, so when I heard that Steve Oliphant was going to visit Campbell's son, I asked him if he could help to document how many times Carlos climbed Le Conte.
 Steve responded with this story from Jim Campbell: "My Dad, Carlos, hiked to the top of Mount Le Conte between 100 and 120 times. He said his dad once asked Harvey Broome how many times he had hiked to the Mt LeConte, and Harvey said "150 times" Carlos asked him how did he get to the top, Harvey said "by a trail", and then Carlos asked "how did you get to the trail?" "By car." 
 Carlos would always tease Harvey Broome who thought there should be no roads or trails. They had a lifelong friendly and warm teasing relationship, despite their differences in providing moderate vs. very limited accessibility to remote mountains. Our Le Conte honor roll lists Harvey with 65, a total I found in one of his hiking journals, probably "Out Under the Skies of the Great Smokies."
 I also found a 1960 story in the Knoxville News-Sentinel where Campbell, at age 68, estimated he had climbed Le Conte 75 to 80 times. He said he has reached  an age when he prefers to ride a horse to Le Conte and walk back. Since Carlos lived another 18 years, his son's estimate of 100 to 120 trips sounds plausible. 
 Steve wrote the opportunity to sit down with Jim Campbell was "one of my more amazing days in my 57 years in Oak Ridge, Tennessee." Mr. Campbell signed a 1960 edition of his father's book "Birth of a National Park" that belonged to Steve's father. "Any history book written since of the GSMNP borrowed heavily from this one," Steve posted on Facebook. "Jim, in his 90's is a treasure of what we call the 'Secret City': Oak Ridge, Tennessee, he knows every person in town. He and my Dad went to the University of Tennessee together in the late 1940's. We "chatted" today for 4 hours, seemed like 20 minutes. I was hoping Jim would tell me his recollections of his Dad's memories of Harvey Broome, Jim Thompson, Dutch Roth, David Chapman, Paul Fink, Horace Albright, Arno Cammerer, Arthur Stupka, Ben Morton, Benton McKaye, Myron Avery, and Colonel Townsend. He didn't. He told me his personal memories first hand of his relationship with all the above. I didn't realize he knew them all and vice versa. His Dad, Carlos Campbell has the best pedigree in the founding of the Smokies. He worked for the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce promoting the Smokies as a potential National Park from 1920 to 1922, then work for Jim Thompson as a photographer assistant carrying his 25 lb tripod into every corner of today's park. Then they both worked for Colonel David C. Chapman at the Great Smoky Mountains Conservation Association in the late 1920's. The GSMCA was the original organization promoting the Smokies as a National Park on the Tennessee side."

Jim Campbell signs his father's book
 "Birth of a National Park" for Steve Oliphant

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IF YOU ARE READING THIS ON YOUR PHONE, you will need to switch from the mobile view to full screen (iPhone users click on "View web version" below) to see our Honor Roll, where we list dozens of men and women who have climbed Mount Le Conte at least 100 times.

Milestones at the Mountaintop: 2018 and before

 I began researching Le Conte's most relentless climbers in 2012, but it was not until 2019 that I was able to collect thorough information from the sign-in logs at Le Conte Lodge.

 Here are some milestone ascents from previous years.

2018

• DEWEY SLUSHER, has well over 250 ascents through 2018, including July 29, Oct. 4, and Nov. 21.
• LARRY RUSSELL of Sevierville TN, #200 on July 18. 
• GUY CHARLEVILLE of New Orleans LA, #100 on Nov. 22.
• JANICE CHARLEVILLE of New Orleans LA, #100 on Nov. 22. 
• ADAM OZMENT of Mascot TN, June 29. 
• ADAM GRAVETT of Sevierville TN, Aug. 11.
• CINDY WISNIESKI of Gahanna OH, #45 on Sept. 2.
• STEVE BARRS of Knoxville TN, #26 on Sept. 28.
• MIKE KEASER of Heath OH #20-plus on Sept. 28.
• THOMAS KEOHL, #20 on Nov. 4. This was his first trip in at least eight years. He set a personal speed record of 2:42 up the 5-mile Alum Cave Bluff Trail.

2017

• KAREN HATFIELD and RANDY HATFIELD, #40, March 25 (with Mike Maples)
• DEWEY SLUSHER, #230 on March 15.
• GARY WHITE of Alabama, #90 on March 15. 
• CHRIS MAULDEN, on Feb. 11.
• BOB CARR, on Feb. 19. 

2016

• TONY COPE, of New Palestine IN, #34 on April 23. Tony and his wife Susan #20 began climbing Le Conte in 2009. In more recent years, they have been focused on the 900-mile club, but Tony said, "Perhaps someday we will reach #100."
• SUSAN COPE, of New Palestine IN, #20 on April 23.
• DEWEY SLUSHER, Jan. 1. 

2014

• DAVE SCANLON, #982 on Sept. 9.
• LARRY RUSSELL, #100 on Aug. 7. 
• JEFF WADLEY, #88 on May 5. 
• CHRIS MAULDEN, April 12
• DEWEY SLUSHER, Jan. 7, in minus-17 cold.
  
  2013
• TIMOTHY MASSEY, March 2, up Rainbow and down Bullhead, through knee-deep snow. 

2012
• TOM LAYTON, #4 July 22, up Boulevard down Alum.
• CHARLIE BRADY, #23 Oct. 31.

2008

• ED WRIGHT, #1,310 Oct. 25, via Alum.
• RON VALENTINE, est. #3,798 Oct. 25, Alum. 

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."

Guy Charleville #100: From New Orleans to Le Conte

Adam Gravett with Janice and Guy Charleville

 The Le Conte community is grieving over the loss of Guy Charleville, who was fatally injured in a highway crash Dec. 21 in Louisiana, just four weeks after he and his wife Janice celebrated their 100th climb of Mount Le Conte.
 Guy, 64, was a special education teacher for 41 years in New Orleans. Even though the Charlevilles lived over 600 miles from the Great Smoky Mountains, they visited frequently and volunteered at the lodge. Guy's obituary says, "He took every opportunity to be in the beauties of nature that God provided him."
 Adam Gravett met the Charlevilles atop Le Conte on Thanksgiving Day and posted this note on Facebook:

Let me introduce you to Guy and Janice Charleville. They are from New Orleans and love our mountains. Love them so much that they volunteer at the lodge. They were volunteering to help break everything down at end of season this year. They also volunteer to be a substitute caretakers when needed. Since 1984, they have made 100 trips to LeConte Lodge! Bravo, congratulations, and thank you ... for your love of the mountains, 100 trips to the lodge and your willingness to volunteer for something that we all hold so dear.

 The Charlevilles are the 50th and 51st hikers we've documented with at least 100 climbs of Le Conte. Many of those are couples, including longtime lodge employees Pauline and Jack Huff, Lisa and Tim Line, Myrtle and Herrick Brown, and Allyson and Chris Virden.
 Excluding staff, the record for most hikes by a couple is held by Jean Ann and Dr. Jesse "Kip" Miller of Jackson, Tenn., whose 239th hike in 2012 was mentioned in the High On LeConte blog. That was Jean Ann's 79th birthday. Dr. Miller made 99 hikes before he had heart bypass surgery in 2000, and they returned to Le Conte just 24 days later. If you have any update on their totals, please leave a comment.
 Another couple on our list is Shirley and Bo Henry. She had 173 hikes and he had 107 in 1998, when they were last mentioned in Ed Wright's hiking logs.
 Vesna and Erik Plakanis, owners of the Walk in the Woods guide service, both have climbed Le Conte more than 100 times. 

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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IF YOU ARE READING THIS ON YOUR PHONE, you will need to switch from the mobile view to full screen (iPhone users click on "View web version" below) to see our Honor Roll and enjoy the full breadth of the information we've accumulated.

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.

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.

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 Boston—217 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.)

Dr. Ed Jones #350: Not an April Fools' joke

 Hikers arriving at Le Conte Lodge with reservations for the night of April 1 were greeted with this joke on the iconic sign above the dining-room doors:

 When they went to write their names in the logbook and scanned down the column that shows how many trips each guest has made to Le Conte, they probably thought they were seeing another April Fools prank:

 350 trips to Le Conte? As far-fetched as it must have seemed for sore-footed novices signing the register for the first or second time, that's no joke.

 Dr. Ed Jones probably has climbed Mount Le Conte more times than any active hiker except for Ron Valentine, David Dinwiddie, and a few of the staffers at the Lodge. He made his 400th ascent on July 20, 2019.
 He is a physicist and physician in Knoxville whose website, ecjones.org, includes hundreds of photos chronicling 35 years of hikes and explorations on Le Conte. He is also a meticulous record-keeper—note how he documented his dates for hikes 347, 348, and 349, which he made while the Lodge was closed for winter. 

 Jones was in medical school at the University of Tennessee in 1996 when he first showed up in the hiking journals of Ed Wright. At that time, Wright had 852 climbs and Jones 188. Wright (who finished with 1,310) described Jones as a close friend of Paul Dinwiddie (the previous record-holder with 750) and an expert on the off-trail routes up Le Conte. By the time he earned his M.D. in 2000, Jones had 243 climbs. I wonder if any other medical student has found time to hike Le Conte more than 50 times.

Dr. Ed Jones at High Top (photo from his website)