The Chattanooga crew were joined by family on their second over.
The Tour de Le Conte has always been an exclusive club, but on the weekend of Aug. 21-22, the number of completers grew by nine.
Sam Runyan, 15, from New Market, Tenn., became the youngest to complete the Tour de Le Conte, when he and friend Grant Sexton, 26, completed a 45.7-mile course in 14 hours and 30 minutes. The fastest known time by a teenager had been 22:02 by 16-year-old Davis Soehn in 2011.
Runyan and Sexton started up Trillium at 6:28 a.m., descended Alum, shuttled to Newfound Gap, went up Boulevard, down Bullhead, up Rainbow, and down Brushy Mountain/Porters Creek to finish in Greenbrier just after nightfall at 8:58 p.m.
Grant and Sam at High Top on their second ascent of the day
A few hours later, a team of seven friends from Concord Baptist Church in Chattanooga also completed the Tour, beating the 24-hour limit by 50 minutes. Several of them had made one previous Le Conte hike, but mostly they were strangers to these trails. Travis Keeton called it “the most extreme adventure any of us have ever done.” Others on the crew were Jason Blair, Rob McGarvey, Spencer Morse, Steffan Nunn, Neil Placer, and Brian Stoddard. Here is a video of their Tour.
They started up Bullhead at 4:20 a.m. on Saturday and went down Trillium, up Rainbow, down Alum, up Boulevard, and down Brushy Mountain, finishing at 3:30 a.m. Sunday, Aug. 22. Three wives and three children joined them on the Rainbow-Alum legs. Hikers at the Lodge greeted them with a cake when they completed the Boulevard trail at 11 p.m. Their route was 45.1 miles.
At least 55 individuals have completed the Tour since Lee Lewis and Mike Povia first hiked all six trails in 1993. We now have 14 completions reported in 2021—making this the busiest year in the history of this challenge.
HONOR ROLL: Ollie Dilback of Asheville, N.C., climbed Le Conte on May 20 to become the 94th hiker on our honor roll with at least 100 ascents.
RECORDS: We have recently added a few accomplishments to our record book. We are crediting Tillroe Smith of Moody, Alabama, with the one-week record, as he made 13 climbs June 13-19, 1999, climbing once on Sunday and twice a day for the rest of the week. (Thumbs-up to Diana Strech for tracking down the details.) Tillroe was already in the Le Conte record book for 15 consecutive climbing days in 2002.
Also, I found a 1940 newspaper story that credits Pauline Huff with hiking from Newfound Gap to the Lodge in 2 hours flat. The fastest time we’ve seen for that route is 1:57:18 by Timothy Massey on July 17, 2021.