Sister Betty Jane Barnett

Sister Betty Jane Barnett, who had careers as a nun and Somerset science teacher before retiring to the life of inspiring outdoorswoman, died Friday.

She was 84, and she hiked more in the last two dozen years than most people do in a lifetime.

One of her favorite pastimes was climbing Mount LeConte in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the third-highest peak in the nation's most-visited park.

Ed Wright, a Tennessee man who has made more than 1,300 trips up LeConte, said yesterday that Sister Barnett had made either 217 or 218 trips to the 6,589-foot summit.

"She was one of the dear ones on the mountain," he said.

Wright has dubbed the last steep section before the point known as Old Horse Gate "Betty Jane's Stairway to Heaven."

Sister Barnett also hiked the Appalachian Trail, and she twice walked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back.

Her friend Debbie Carman made her first trip up LeConte when Sister Barnett was on her 33rd. Carman now has 49 climbs under her belt.

"I don't think I would have made the first one if it wasn't for her," she said.

Another friend, Bernita Dodson, owes her interest in the outdoors to Sister Barnett.

"She taught me the names of just about every wildflower in the book," she said.

Both Carman and Dodson described her as someone who had varied interests and a wide range of friends.

"I don't know any place I ever went with that lady -- and I'm talking from Maine to the Grand Canyon -- when she didn't run into someone she knew," Dodson said.

Sister Barnett was born in Somerset, but she spent 20 years teaching at Catholic schools around the country before returning to care for her sick mother.

Sister Barnett's 173rd climb up LeConte, in October 2000, was featured in an article in the Herald-Leader.

On the top of the mountain that beautiful fall day, she was asked why she kept making the 5 miles up and 5 miles back. She thought a moment, then said it was a religious experience.

"I think I find God on the mountain," she said.

Then she laughed and added this:

"I do a lot of praying on the way up and on the way back down."

Funeral arrangements are incomplete at Pulaski Funeral Home in Somerset.