Dave Landreth was one of the foremost explorers of of Mount Le Conte and the Smokies. He climbed dozens of off-trail routes on Mount Le Conte, and LeContest has him on our honor roll based on his statement that he came down Alum Cave Trail hundreds of times in 40-plus years he spent in the Smokies.
As he approached 70, Landreth settled in Wyoming, where he earned the nickname "Griztrax" for making plaster casts of the footprints of Yellowstone bears. Today, many Smokies hikers are mourning at the news that he has passed away.
Dave, raised in Henderson County, was profiled in 2014 in Blue Ridge Outdoors magazine, where author Peter Barr called him the "Edward Abbey of the East." In another interview with Jeff Clark, Landreth bestowed that title onto one his favorite writers, Harvey Broome, a Knoxville lawyer who was a co-founder of the Wilderness Society.
In the latter interview, Landreth described the Alum Cave Bluff Trail as "by far my favorite" in the Smokies. "I don’t mind the crowds — I think that it’s wonderful to see all of those people out enjoying the Park. If they’re overweight and out of shape, I like it even better. That is such an incredible trail and I always recommend it first over all others to anybody that is visiting the National Park for the first time.
"It was one of the first trails that I ever hiked in the Smokies and I never grow tired of its beauty. It’s also the trail that I use most often when I’m returning from some of my favorite off-trail rambles, so I’ve hiked it at least one way hundreds of times over the 40 something years that I’ve been hiking the Smokies."
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