This Le Conte Lodge, they say, is the highest mountain lodge east of the
Rockies. It stands at 6400 feet. With one exception, it is the only
place within the boundaries of the Great Smokies National Park where you
can stay all night. And the only way to get up here is to walk or ride a
horse.
The Lodge is open about seven months of the year. In winter it gets to
40 below up here, and the buildings lie deep in snow. The hottest they
remember it being in summertime is 68, and the people who work here get
so used to cool summers that they almost die when they go down to the
valley heat of Gatlinburg, a mile below.
The lodge can put up 44 people. They charge $4 a day for room and two
meals. In the three mid-summer months the place is full every night. But
right now there aren’t so many. Unless somebody shows up late, I will be
the lone guest tonight.
In the old days up here, all the beds were of balsam boughs. City
fellers who walked up the mountain could go back home and tell of
sleeping on a bed of brush and limbs.
But now this is a National Park, and you can’t even cut a twig from a
tree. So visitors have to be content with nice modern mattresses and
Hudson’s Bay blankets.
Some amazing people have walked into Le Conte Lodge. One 94-year-old man
climbed the mountain on foot. An 83-year-old woman came up under her own
steam. And another man past 80 walked up alone, got caught by darkness
within 200 yards of the Lodge but didn’t know where he was, so lay down
on the ground and slept all night. He walked on in after daylight,
feeling fine.