Life at the top...

All I could do when we got there was to lay down.

We probably straggled in about thirty minutes before all the 'guests' sat down to eat. The food was average. There was plenty of it, but it was nothing special. All the supplies used on top of Mt. LeConte are delivered by a pack train of llamas. I guess they are more agreeable than donkeys or mules, but being smaller they could not haul as large a load as other beasts of burden. According to what I was told, during the busy season, the llamas deliver the goods three times a week.

The cabin our group was assigned was probably what the full timers/residents call the Lodge. It was a log cabin, with a central room that had six or eight straight back chairs, two tables, and a fireplace (with a kerosene heater, pilot light lit to keep it dry/tamperate in the cool damp air). Two rooms off on each side of the central room, with a bunk bed in each. The bunk beds were double sized, so each room would sleep four people who would have to be very good friends. And another room behind the wall where the fireplace was with several more single beds. So it could conceivably sleep twelve.

It really was a log cabin. The logs that comprised the walls were rough-hewn, with visible adze marks, and chinking between the logs. But you could see daylight coming through in places when we got up the next morning. And I noticed a little stacked pile of flat rocks in one corner of our room, apparently designed to close up a hole that small creeping or slithering things could squeeze through looking for warmth, food, companionship in cold weather. Glass in the windows, but with fencing wire stapled to the outside of each window frame to keep unwanted visitors from coming in.

There might have been four of these cabins, then some smaller ones that might sleep four people. I don't know how many people there were in the dining room, but heard that the place was 'full'. There were a number of kids, little people under twelve - maybe a dozen. And two babies, small enough that they would have had to be brought up in carriers, strapped to a parent in front of back. I am thinking about how glad I am that I did not haul a kid, plus all the required accoutrements. I could barely get myself up there: no way I could have toted another person!

(There was a framed photo in the 'office' when I went along as others were purchasing T-shirts as proof of the experience: the man who first started building the establishment strapped a rocking chair onto this back and hiked up the mountain with is mother on his back. Also photos and memorabilia relating stories of people who had made the trip up the mountain hundreds and hundreds of times. Not me.)

There is a loom in the office that was built by the people who started the Lodge that is still functional, having been used to make fabric that is used there in the buildings: curtains, coverlets for the beds, other furnishings. I read about someone who spent the winter up there on the windswept, icy mountain weaving cloth. I can see that it would be so quiet and peaceful, if you like quiet and peaceful and abounding serenity with huge doses of solitude. And snow piled up past the window frames. And excruciating cold.

I think there must be maybe half a dozen 'residents', young adults who live up there during the spring-early fall months when the lodge is open for guests. Probably in a dorm type area adjacent to the dining hall. They do the cooking: prep, serving, clean up. And prepare the guest rooms/beds everyday when they have a new group straggle in. Assuming the place is run by the Park Service rather than as a concession, they would be part-time, temporary employees of the NPS.

There was the option after dinner to walk up to an overlook and hear a talk by a ranger before sunset. But all I could do was lay on the bed. My group sat on the porch and talked a while, then rounded up some spoons and cards for the usual hilarity of Paula's well-known entertainment. When it gets dark, everyone goes to bed, which is perfectly acceptable to people who have been walking for miles and miles up a ridiculously steep incline.

There is no electricity. So if you didn't bring your flashlight/headlamp, you're going to bed anyway, or stumbling around in the dark. Which is not smart as you could stumble yourself off the edge at any misstep.