Posted on 11/05/2017 9:22:55 PM PST by nickcarraway
There was a moment back in August when Dale “Grey Beard” Sanders considered giving up.
In the middle of the 100-Mile Wilderness in Maine, far from help, he was bleeding internally and having heart palpitations — not surprising considering that he was 50 or 60 years older than most of the people he had met on the Appalachian Trail.
Sanders called his wife in Bartlett, Tennessee, and she urged him to keep going. With a go-ahead from his doctors, he did, and on Thursday, Sanders, 82, officially became the oldest person to hike the entire 2,190-mile trail in a year.
He walked much of it alone, but for the last mile, ending at the There was a moment back in August when Dale “Grey Beard” Sanders considered giving up.
In the middle of the 100-Mile Wilderness in Maine, far from help, he was bleeding internally and having heart palpitations — not surprising considering that he was 50 or 60 years older than most of the people he had met on the Appalachian Trail.
Sanders called his wife in Bartlett, Tennessee, and she urged him to keep going. With a go-ahead from his doctors, he did, and on Thursday, Sanders, 82, officially became the oldest person to hike the entire 2,190-mile trail in a year.
He walked much of it alone, but for the last mile, ending at the Appalachian Trail Conservancy headquarters in Harpers Ferry, Sanders was joined by friends, family and hikers — including a pair of dogs — he had met along the trail.
At the end of it, he danced a jig.
At the end of it, he danced a jig.
(Excerpt) Read more at sentinelsource.com ...
You can carry me on your back or push my eventual wheel chair
I could prolly handle the App Trail at a slow pace
But the other two at altitude
No way
1 million feet of vertical elevation if you do all three. A mere stretch of the legs.
Lol
I have hiked and climbed in Alaska and Canada and all of the west
Jamaica and Haiti
Colombia and Argentina and Peru
Switzerland
Some at 5500 meters plus
That ship has sailed......
My thoughts too....
I met an guy at a LL Bean store opening that took 28 years to walk the trail and wrote a book about it.
Gray Beards All look like that.
Old Guys Rule!
He is a retired Marine Corps officer.
One of Bill Bryson's books is about the Appalachian Trail (made into a movie) but he only walked portions of it.
I walked a few hundred yards of the trail when I visited Harper's Ferry. Hiking a longer stretch sounds very appealing but I can't imagine walking the entire trail...let alone doing it four times.
Four years ago I hiked six segments of the trail, starting in NC and ending in Massachusetts. I was a “Reebock Hiker”. I would drive my RV to an area and then hike for a couple of days and then take a few days off before driving a few hundred miles and doing it again. There’s no way I would tackle the whole trail. I was 56 years old at the time and it was much harder than I remembered from my boy scout days.
Does the AT really end in Argentina? :-)
You betcha!
Randy old goat
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