The Info:

• LeConte Lodge has a capacity of 50 guests per night housed in either rough-hewn cabins or group sleeping lodges. The cabins are furnished with upper and lower double bunk beds, making them ideal for two couples or a family of four to five persons. The lodges sleep from 10 to 13 persons each.

• There are five trails to the lodge, the shortest and steepest being Alum Cave Trail at 5 1/2 miles, which a hiker in good condition can do in approximately four hours. None of these trails can be considered a stroll and you occasionally encounter ice and snow as late as May or as early as October. The other trails are Rainbow Falls and Trillium Gap, each 6.5 miles, a hike of about five hours; Bullhead at 7.2 miles and about five hours; and Boulevard, 8 miles and about 5 1/2 hours. Parking is available at the start of each trail.

• For more information go to www.lecontelodge.com.

The buzz of thousands of bees greeted us atop Mt. LeConte.

As one of the crew that operates the rustic lodge deep in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park showed us our cabin, we heard their serenade. My children were looking around, at first disquieted by the steady, loud humming sound coming from the wildflowers growing on two sides of our cabin.

“That’s the bees,” said J.C. Hines, smiling at our expressions. “You’ll get used to it.”

And we did. It was just one more of the unique experiences from a memorable night at the only place one can get a soft bed and home-cooked meals within the confines of the national park. LeConte Lodge — really a collection of a dozen or so cabins of varying size — is located right on top of 6,593-foot Mt. LeConte (the third highest peak in the Smokies after Clingmans Dome and Mt. Guyot).

Getting there

Booking a room at Mt. LeConte is no easy task.

Sometimes you just have to get lucky. Soon after learning that a new law would prevent North Carolina students from starting school before Aug. 25, I called to see if some early August weekdays were available. As the school year had begun starting earlier and earlier in August, I figured there might be a lull during this time. A couple of mid-week dates were open, so I booked a cabin for my family.

The lodge is run by a private company — Stokely Hospitality Enterprises — but is under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service. When reservations for 2006 open on the first Monday in October at 8:30 a.m., weekends and holidays will be gone within a couple of hours. By Nov. 1, every day the lodge is open — from mid-March to late November — will be reserved.

“Last year we had 12,000 overnight guests,” said Chris Virden, 37, who has been co-managing the lodge with his wife Allison for three years.

Ten years ago my wife and I had hiked to LeConte and talked with the people who were working at the facility’s lodge. In those days, people with reservations were given priority to book on the same day the following year. Virden said that system has been eliminated, which makes the first-Monday-in-October rush that much more important for those who want to stay at the lodge.

“We’ll take requests for reservations by mail. At 8:30 a.m. we start processing the mail requests at the same time we are taking phone orders,” said Virden. That means a letter seeking reservations on a particular date — or even giving the reservation-makers several options — would increase one’s chances of getting in.

A diamond in the rough

With 12,000 overnight guests per year, LeConte Lodge could hardly be called a secret. Still, because of its reputation as a place where it’s all-but-impossible to get a reservation, it seems few people have actually stayed there. Start asking around and everyone has heard of LeConte Lodge but it’s difficult to find people who have spent the night.

Part of LeConte’s appeal is its inaccessibility. The shortest route up is on the Alum Cave Trail, which is 5.2 miles with a 3,000-foot elevation gain. The trail starts in an old-growth forest and begins ascending almost immediately. At one point stone stairs cut into a huge boulder guide hikers through Arch Rock. The National Park Service has installed cables along the trail to help hikers, and they are extremely helpful in rain and snow.

Much of the trail is along loose rock, and at some points there are precipitous cliffs and the trail is only a few feet wide. The magnitude of the drop-offs will surprise those used to hiking in the Smokies, where the mountains usually rise and fall at a slope.

We made it up to the lodge in 3 1/2 hours, while our trip down at a pretty quick pace took 2 hours and 20 minutes. There are other trails (see info box) to the lodge, but all of them will require an even longer hike. Since the lodge does need supplies of food and other goods, hikers on the Trillium Gap Trail might run into the llama supply train. Three days a week supplies are brought up by the animals, which replaced horses because they did less damage to the trails.

Both getting to LeConte and off can be challenging. Hines, a member of the crew, said the story of “Little Debbie” has been retold many times this year. She was an “extremely large” woman, Hines said, who took 24 hours to hike to the lodge earlier this summer. She was physically unable to get down, so she ended up staying a week while staff tried to figure out a way to help her get off the mountain. Finally a horse was brought up, but it couldn’t handle her weight and manage the steep trail. Eventually a helicopter was called in.

“A few days later she sent the LeConte crew a box of Little Debbie cakes, Hines said, hence the name for the story.

Bre Golden and Mike Baker of Waretown, N.J., were at LeConte the same night we stayed. Mike had originally planned to ask Bre to marry him at the lodge, but had popped the question a few days earlier.

“I was scared I might lose the ring on the way up,” he said.

“This is just cool,” said Golden. “We hike a lot, but there is no elevation change in New Jersey.”

There’s no electricity at LeConte, but you hardly notice. Upon arrival a crew member will escort you to your cabin, which comes complete with a water bucket and a wash basin. Our cabin slept five, and it had amazingly comfortable, firm beds (sheets are clean and each bed has three blankets), a table with an oil lamp, and a heater powered by the lodge’s only real modern amenity — propane.

Coffee and hot chocolate are available all afternoon. The 6 p.m. dinner is family style with shared tables. The food is plentiful and hearty. We had beef, cooked apples, green beans, mashed potatoes, peaches, corn bread and soup. Wine is available with dinner but must be purchased when reservations are made.

It was overcast and rainy while we were at LeConte, but we still hiked up after dinner to where — on a clear night — many say some of the best sunsets in the Smokies can be viewed. The Clifftops are just a couple of hundred yards up a steep trail, and the rock formations are stunning. The foliage is similar to that on other heath balds in the southern Appalachians, but the area is suffering from the effects of invasive insects and acid rain like other parts of the Smokies.

Just like on the trail up to LeConte, the steepness and the ruggedness of this terrain is surprising. This area has a collection of the highest mountains east of the Rockies, and they provide a constantly stunning backdrop.

With the weather preventing us from viewing one of the famous sunsets, we contented ourselves with watching clouds roll up the mountains and engulf us, then roll away and briefly open up a portion of the mountains. Back at our cabin I let our kids do some carving with their pocket knives.

The office-lodge is the social center of LeConte. It has books, games, a load of historical photos and several tables. After the hike and some carving, we played cards and chatted with other guests before retiring early to our room

Don’t worry about missing breakfast. Crew members go around knocking on doors at 7:45 to make sure all are up for the 8 a.m. meal. And you don’t want to miss it. Pancakes, eggs, bacon, rolls, grits, plenty of coffee and hot chocolate — and all you want of all of it.

After sleeping to the sounds of steady rain, we didn’t get up early enough to take the mile hike to Myrtle Point for the sunrise. We were socked in by fog, so I got coffee and just wandered around the cabins. The silence of the morning was intoxicating.

After breakfast, we decided to head down the mountain early. We put on our rain gear and loaded our daypacks. I went by to talk to Virden about making a reservation for next year, which is when I learned that the lottery starts Oct. 3. As he sold a few T-shirts to other campers, I was thinking about getting back to civilization, back to work, back to where the buzzing of bees is seldom noticed. I asked him how he liked living atop LeConte for nearly nine months a year, and his answer was about what I expected.

“God, I love it up here. I can’t make it on the outside, there’s too much traffic.”