Well, we are sitting in a layer of clouds waiting for an opening to fly the helicopter to the lodge to drop off supplies to fix the office. For those of you who have been up this year, I am sure you noticed the office is in need of repair. We have a crew ready to go as soon as we can get the supplies on the mountain. Yesterday was a gorgeous day with a high of 68º and low of 52º. We have not been so lucky today. Chris and I were talking about how our trip up the mountain, on Sunday, seemed like an episode from Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. We started off on the lower section of Alum by watching a baby shrew walk along the trail. It was so bold, it walked right between my feet. It looked like a little brown cotton ball with a long tail. I believe it was a pygmy shrew. It looked just like this photo I found online. We then continued our journey around the bluff and toward the half way point. We heard the cry of the Peregrine falcon while he was hunting for his lunch. As we came up to the half way point, a couple pointed out that he had landed in a tree. It looked like he had caught his lunch. We walked up the trail and looked straight up and could see the feathers from his meal. I think he had caught a small bird. I am always so amazed when I get to see the falcons in action.
We continued our climb and reached the flat section before the lodge. Just before the Rainbow/ Alum split, I heard a loud noise that was only a few feet from me. It sounded big, but I couldn't focus on what it was. Finally, as I got my bearings, I realized it was a deer and she blended in perfectly with the brush. She did not care one bit that we were standing so close. I don't normally like to be that close to wild life, they are "wild", but it happened by circumstance and I didn't want to spook her. We watched her for a minute and continued on to work. We had a great commute and it gave us some great stories to tell. What a perfect day for a hike back to work. The temperatures have been amazing. The high yesterday was 62º with a low of 49º. It was a lot cooler than it normally is in July. We had a great commute. The rhododendron is starting to bloom around the parking lot. St. John's Wort is in full swing the last mile of Alum. I love this time of year and the anticipation of the color that is about to take over the mountain top.
We had a great evening enjoying our Progressive Dinner. The crew always amazes me with the yummy food they prepare. I get to enjoy the night off from making their dinner. We had two different types of soup. Nathan made a corn and potato chowder that was out of this world good. Nicholette made a delicious version of broccoli cheddar soup. We then went to Lesley's room and enjoyed an asian slaw. That was followed by a trip to Pat and Jeanie's room where we enjoyed a buffalo cheese dip. Brad made vegetable and beef kabobs that were lip smacking good. The last treats were oreo ball truffles chased with coke floats made with homemade ice cream. Rachel and Matt out did themselves with the dessert course. Needless to say, non of us went to bed hungry. It was a fun night hanging with the crew and making lasting memories. We closed the evening by watching Dollywood's firework display and sipping on our coke floats. These are the times I will miss, but I do have twelve great years of memories. I am glad to be back up top and ready for another couple weeks in the cooler climate. Although, it was rather cool down in Gatlinburg this past weekend. I enjoyed meeting some of you at the Gatlinburg Farmers Market. It is great to finally have faces to go with some of the names from the comment section. Once again, it is time to set up for breakfast. I hope you all have a splendid day. Good afternoon to all of you. We're putting the bookend on our Independence Day weekend on top of LeConte tonight with our annual crew progressive dinner. After we serve our guests supper, we'll wander around to all the crew cabins and sample different dishes prepared by crew members. I'll let Allyson write more about it tomorrow if she chooses, but it's always one of the most anticipated events of the season for the crew. We shine up our rooms and roll out the welcome mat for each other, ending the night happy and fulfilled.
We've enjoyed another pretty day up on LeConte. The high temperature was 65 with a low of 45, just about perfect. We notched our fifth consecutive day without measurable rainfall, an eternity during a LeConte summer. It occurred to me that I've written from time to time about the Huffs, the first family of LeConte. However, I've given Paul Adams, the creator of the first camp on LeConte, the short end of the stick. Today I'm going to relate Paul Adams' story of his first supply trip up LeConte to build a camp. This account comes from Adams' book, Mt. LeConte, published in 1966. Even before the Huffs, Paul Adams got the assignment to carve out our slice of paradise on top of Mt. LeConte in 1925. "It was on the morning of July 13, 1925 when four of us started packing supplies to LeConte to start the camp that has remained to this day," Adams recalled. In the first supply trip, the pioneers hauled up a tent, two blankets each, utensils, food for three meals, a rifle, six-foot crosscut saw, double-bit axe and a 10-pound sledge. All of those items seemed like good, practical ideas to me. Oddly enough, Adams chose to bring up a typewriter on the second supply trip. All of it was certainly hard work as he toiled to build what would become LeConte Lodge. However, it appears that his heart was in the task whole-hog. "Before I slept, I thanked God for having lived this very happy day," Adams said of his thoughts on his first night on the mountain. For his second night's supper, Adams feasted on fried squirrel, boiled potatoes, fresh green beans, sawdust gravy, bread and coffee. You can still find derivations of some of those things on tonight's guest menu (don't hold your breath waiting for squirrel). They have their genesis in the past, when Paul Adams blazed a trail to LeConte. Allyson has returned from her off days, so I'll be turning updates over to her for a while. To all of you who came up to see us recently, thank you. Thanks to all of you for reading. Happy trails. Perfection. That's the best way to describe Independence Day 2014 at LeConte Lodge. Of the four Independence Days since I've been on the LeConte crew, we caught by far the prettiest day of the lot yesterday for our July 4 festivities.
Once the clouds finally broke it was bluebird pretty all afternoon and night with great visibility down into the valley. Our high was 62 with a chilly overnight low of 38. The Fourth of July I spent in Alaska was warmer, but no prettier. We recorded no precipitation Friday. We've not registered any rain for four consecutive days. Last summer, during all of July we only had five days without rain. It's already been a prettier summer than 2013. We continued a LeConte crew Independence Day tradition last night. We almost always eat our supper at 5 p.m. before we prepare to serve our guests at 6 p.m. However, the Fourth of July is different. When weather allows on July 4, the crew enjoys a cookout and eats out on the dining room deck after our supper chores are concluded. Nicholette pieced together a wonderful cookout (with an assist to Brad on the grill). It was almost as if sunset knew it was competing with the upcoming fireworks. The cool temperatures cleared the air and spread a canvas of visibility clear across to the Cumberland Mountains, a rarity in the hazy heat of summer. Sunset proved spectacular. Then humans and gunpowder got in on the act. The entire Tennessee Valley flashed with the colorful pops. I played "Stars and Stripes Forever" on my iPod. From the choreographed professional displays hosted by cities to families sitting in backyards and shooting off their best fireworks--LeConte offered the perfect place to take it all in. We use terms like sensory overload too often, but after sunset the arsenal of fireworks painting the sky over Tennessee reminded me of multicolored fireflies. I imagine the only folks who didn't like the aerial display were emergency room doctors and night birds. I thought about the fortune spent on fireworks by cities around the area. I also envisioned one of the single, brilliant flashes and thought that some middle school boy had bought the very best single firework he could with lawn-mowing money and had saved it for last (just as I used to do growing up). Looking through binoculars, I turned my vision skyward to admire the moon in the crisp, mountain air. I could see craters toward the shadows of the half moon. I thought about the 12 people who had walked on the moon during the Apollo program, some leaving flags--all of them American. All in all, we had some fine guests and a great July 4, probably my favorite night on LeConte this year. I hope you all had a safe and happy Independence Day, too. Happy trails. "There is nothing so American as our national parks. The scenery and wildlife are native. The fundamental idea behind the parks is native. It is, in brief, that the country belongs to the people, that it is in process of making for the enrichment of the lives of all of us. The parks stand as the outward symbol of this great human principle." Happy Independence Day to all. I've always enjoyed the Fourth of July, and today has started on a fine note. After being swallowed by clouds yesterday, the mountain caught an evening opening for a glimpse at a brilliant sunset. Clouds again shrouded LeConte until early Friday afternoon, but we're looking at sunshine again with a favorable weekend forecast. The weather did turn quite a bit cooler, shedding 10 degrees for a high of 64 and overnight low of 45.
I've heard that there is still quite a bit of bear activity around the Trillium Gap, Rainbow Falls and Bullhead Trails to LeConte. As of Friday afternoon, all the trails remain open. In keeping with the Independence Day theme, we had a young guest last weekend who would have done Paul Revere proud. He was so excited about the impending arrival of the llamas that he buzzed around exclaiming, "The llamas are coming! The llamas are coming!" In an interesting historical note, besides Paul Revere, there were other riders dispatched to carry the news that night. Unlike the others who evaded capture, Paul Revere was the only one caught by the British, but they didn't know what to do with him and soon released him. In an odd twist, Revere is remembered to this day, but the riders who were successful were assigned to the dustbin of history. Today during crew lunch we had an interesting group of folks sitting around the table at the top of Tennessee. Frequent hiker Larry hiked a wonderful, sweet (and heavy) watermelon up as an Independence Day treat. We were joined by another German-born lady in her 50s, who celebrates her 28th year in America tomorrow. She brought us some real German chocolate. We were eating a Greek rice dish for lunch. We had some overnight guests who hailed from the other side of the International Date Line. Most of us around the table were Southerners by birth, some with relatives who fought for the Confederacy against the United States. In 2014, it's possible for all of us to sit down for a friendly visit over a glass of sweet tea at the crest of Appalachia in a beautiful national park set aside for all people. That's something we should never take for granted. It's a wonderful country. Happy trails and happy Independence Day. Good afternoon to you. After two days of sunshine, we've found ourselves enveloped in a cloud Thursday. On Wednesday, we topped out at 74 degrees, matching Tuesday's yearly high. Our overnight low was 52 degrees with no precipitation.
Thursday's cloud is so pervasive that you can feel moisture condense on your lips as you move around camp. You can even see wisps of cloud float through the window screens. The llamas appreciated the sunblock during their special Thursday trip to LeConte. The llamas will be keeping bankers' hours and take off July 4. We will be open for all services at LeConte Lodge. The forecast for the weekend is favorable. I expect we'll see a great many first-time hikers. In the chance that some of those are studying for their first ascent of LeConte, I'll pass along a few things as far as trail etiquette goes. After seeing the beautiful white rosebay rhododendrons blooming along Little River Road through the park, I was dismayed to see too many "white flags of surrender" hanging from some trees beside Alum Cave Bluff Trail. Bathroom breaks are a part of hiking, but toilet paper should never be left in the trees or on the ground beside the trail. Toilet paper doesn't disappear as quickly as you think. The Smokies are beautiful and in no need of further decoration. Also, most people know not to litter and are fairly diligent about packing out their food wrappers. However, the little corners ripped off to open the package show up on the ground at the lodge all the time, as they tend to fall out of pockets. Pistachios are a wonderful trail snack. However, their shells last forever and should be designated with a "half-life" like plutonium. Similarly, discarded chewing gum is impervious even to our tough mountain weather. If the weather can break down our buildings, but not chewing gum I'm steering clear of it. Please pack both of those things out with you. I hope it never happens, but someday when the great Yellowstone Supervolcano erupts and people become past tense, there will be three things left on Earth. There will be a cockroach living in a house cobbled together from pistachio shells and discarded chewing gum. I know most of you reading already know all this, but maybe you'll be hiking with a newcomer this summer and can get them off to a clean start in our wonderful national parks. Come on up and see us. Happy trails. Hello again to all of you High on LeConte readers. This is Nathan, filling in for Allyson, who will be celebrating Independence Day in the valley.
The sunny weather and high temperatures have been big news on top of LeConte. We topped out at 74 degrees yesterday, the hottest day of 2014 by four degrees. Additionally, Tuesday's mark of 74 degrees bests all of 2013 in the heat department. Last year's high of 73 occurred on June 12. We received no precipitation Monday or thus far Tuesday. Yesterday saw a gauzy summer haze set over the mountain. Visibility was terrible, but we did get quite a bit of sunshine. It's still plenty sunny today, and the visibility is better. The other big news of the day is that the Park Service has opened the Bullhead Trail to LeConte, which had been closed a couple of weeks because of bear activity. There are signs posted warning hikers of recent bear activity, but the trail is open for use. In other trail news, there is a big tree down on the Rainbow Falls/Bullhead Trail on the final grind up to the lodge. Additionally, there's a large tree reported down about halfway up the Boulevard Trail to LeConte. I hear both require a bit of scrambling around. Both downed trees have been reported to the busy Park Service trail crew, which always does a good job of helping open things up as soon as possible. I was on vacation last week, taking in some beach time with my family. I was helping make sand castles with my nephews (which were promptly stomped down by highly skilled 3 and 7-year-old demolition engineers), when the thought occurred to me as I looked up high into the sky over the Atlantic Ocean: "Just how high is 6,593 feet from sea level? After a week of laziness, I've got to strap on a 40-pound pack and hike that far up to get back to work." I got back fine, but it wasn't always pretty on the hike back as I oozed plenty of sea salt on the trail. We're getting excited about Independence Day on the mountain and hoping for clear night skies. I hope all of you have great plans. If not, come on up and see us. The forecast sounds pretty good. Happy trails. "Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky." -Rabindranath Tagore We have been blessed with some beautiful sunsets lately. I guess that is the gift from all of the rain we have been getting. The high yesterday was 64º with a low of 54º. People are asking about hiker traffic on July 4th. It all depends on what day the 4th falls on. This year will be a long weekend for a lot of folks. I am sure we will have a higher volume of traffic up the mountain. I would not let it deter you from making the trip, part of the fun is meeting some really interesting people at the top. Chris and I are getting ready to head down the mountain. We are going to hang out in Gatlinburg for a bit and work at the Gatlinburg Farmers Market. If you are in town, stop by and say hello. I hope you all have a wonderful 4th where ever you decide to spend it. I am sure there will be some incredible firework displays around the country. Have a great weekend and happy hiking. |
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April 2024
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