If you rest in this old lodge, you earned it

Spiffy is out and rustic is in at this backcountry lodge that’s older than the park, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. For $110 a night, guests get two stick-to-your ribs meals and sleep in bunk beds in rooms lighted by kerosene lamps. The lodge has no electricity for guests. Watch sunrises and sunsets rather than “CSI: Miami” and “So You Think You Can Dance.”

On my first hike to LeConte Lodge, in 2000, I took the Alum Cave Trail, the 5.5-mile path that starts from a parking lot along U.S. 441. Although it was early April, a storm had dumped up to 4 inches of snow on the Smokies the day before.

My hike began at 10:45 a.m. Patches of ice soon covered the trail and passing hikers repeatedly warned me of treacherous footing ahead. As I gained altitude, the narrow trail became iced over as it curved around rock faces. The only reason I didn’t slip and tumble into the forest below was because I clung to the hand cables bolted to the rock.

About 4 p.m., I saw with great relief the mossy shingles of the gray lodge buildings poking through the red spruce canopy. It was 36 degrees. A few minutes later, pail in one hand and cup of hot chocolate in the other, I dumped my pack in my cabin room.

At 6 p.m. the clanging of the dinner bell drew me and other guests to the summer-camp-like dining hall. The first-night dinner consists of beef in gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans, baked apples, cornbread, a peach half and a chocolate chip cookie. For those who stay multiple nights, the entrees rotate to chicken and dumplings and salmon casserole.

My other trip took place in 2005 during a July heat wave. I hiked up with the llama pack train that, three days a week, hauls in perishable food and clean linen and hauls out garbage and dirty linen.

Llama wrangler Alan Householder led a caravan as he does every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Householder took his charges, saddled with cargo-holding panniers, up the 6.5-mile-long Trillium Gap Trail near Gatlinburg, Tenn. (as he does this season).

We left at 8:30 a.m. Six hours later, and trailing Householder and the llamas by 30 minutes, I arrived at the lodge drenched with sweat. The thermometer hit a “sweltering” 79 degrees at the lodge, which is as hot as it ever gets there.

Householder tethered the llamas to a hitching post and fed them pancakes left over from breakfast, a reward for their beast-of-burden work. He warns admirers to pet the docile animals on their sides, not on their heads, which they detest.

Each spring a helicopter brings in about 70,000 pounds of canned food plus propane for heating and kerosene to supply the March-November season, according to Tim Line, general manager of the lodge along with his wife, Lisa.

Operated by a park concessionaire, LeConte Lodge has seven cabins and three group cabins. With a capacity of 60 a night, the lodge counts 12,000 visitor-nights a year. Some guests have been coming for more than 40 years, Line said.

The lodge is so popular that it’s difficult to get in after the season is under way except by cancellation.

Applicants can get on a waiting list for guests who cancel more than 10 days in advance. Those who can come on short notice can fill impromptu cancellations by checking with lodge headquarters for openings. See www.lecontelodge.com.

For reservations for 2010, Line said, ask for preferred dates and alternatives. All requests go into a common file.

On Oct. 1, they’ll be drawn out randomly and booked in order of selection. The lodge first fills dates for people who have been coming annually since before 1998, about 30 percent of all guests, before the random drawing, he said.