Good afternoon, Ed,

I hope you are well. I’m sending our hiking story to you. (along with the photos)

Our November 17-18, 2006 hike to the LeConte Lodge to stay overnight. Pat, Jeanie, Daniel and Crissy Lawley. Pats 12^th time to spend the night, my 11^th and Daniel and Crissy’s 1^st. We are hooked.

We arrived at the Alum Cave Trail Head at 7:30am. It was cold, but I forgot to get the temp. It had snowed the night before and the vehicles were "dusted" with the snow. I was so excited. I have wanted to see this trail in the snow ever since we started hiking it in 1998.

I got my wish. It was like a winter wonderland. My "word" for the 2 days we were there was "W0W"! I was just awe struck. The bridges had snow on them, but not too slippery.

It had rained on Wednesday before we hiked on Friday. The creeks were really flowing. Our friends, Nancy and Billy Dial, had hiked to the lodge on that day. They were told that the wind reached 60 mph in some areas. They can attest to that! Whew!

What a difference a day makes!

We got to Arch Rock around 8:30 and stopped for a snack and to rest. We had to be very careful on the footlogs because of some ice. We had bought some "creepers" for our boots, but didn’t use them on the way up. We just took our time and made it fine.

Inspiration Point was pretty in the snow. We were still in the clouds and couldn’t see much, but that was ok. We got to the steps before Alum Cave at 9:35am.

The rock climb approaching Gracie's Pulpit was a little tricky, but again, we just went slow and easy. It was beautiful. Gracie’s Pulpit was neat with the dusting of snow on it. We made it to the first set of steps around 10:30. We call this the beginning of "The Forevers". It just seems to go up forever and ever and ever. But it was only about 30 minutes before we reached the 2^nd set of steps and continued on. The trees above Grassy Slide were decorated like frosted Christmas Trees. There were lots of icicles below Cliff Top.

The snow began to melt and fall off the trees, "splatting" on us along the way. It was just gorgeous!

We made the turn to the lodge about 12:09pm. It was very icy and slippery. My feet flew out from under me and I landed on the ground. But I recovered and we trucked on to the lodge…

We only met or were passed by 6 people on our way up. That was VERY strange. We made it to the top in just under 5 hours. It was very cold, around 27 degrees up there. We ate inside (duh). There were a lot of people there! And we found out that the reason we didn’t meet many people on the trail was that most of them were staying 2 nights!

Cliff Top was beautiful, too! We went to watch the sunset before dinner. Just a beautiful sight.

We were in Cabin #6, I love the new porches.

Dinner was great as usual. The staff was also GREAT! After we had eaten, but were still sitting at our table a group started singing some gospel songs. We stayed and sang with them while the crew cleaned up. Then went to the Lodge for more singing from another group!! Too much fun!

When we got up for breakfast the next morning, Henry told us that it had gotten down to 19 degrees during the night…Burrrr! But they had the Dining Hall warm and toasty and breakfast was wonderful. After breakfast, I took a picture of Pat and Mike before we got ready to head down. (Mike in his T shirt..ha)

Going down was much easier, though we did put our "creepers" on and was amazed at how easy we could walk around on the ice. It was a beautiful, sunny day. And the views were out of this world.

We couldn’t have asked for a better day to hike.

Thanks, Ed, and HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

Jeanie Lawley