Hiker, 91, becomes oldest person to complete grueling Appalachian Trail

A 91-year-old hiker has reclaimed his record as the oldest person to complete the more than 2,000-mile Appalachian Trail.By his count, Dale Sanders, of Tennessee, fell 71 times during the feat, six of which he said were hard falls and one which required a brief hospitalization and another just 200 yards from the end. The 2,193-mile trail runs between Springer Mountain in Georgia and Mount Katahdin in Maine.The Appalachian Trail Conservancy defines a thru-hike as completing all of the trail’s sections in any order within a year, allowing for pauses. Sanders began his hike on 6 September 2025 in West Virginia and, allowing for some brief breaks, he completed his journey on Monday atop Maine’s highest peak, where he paused to pray at the sign marking the summit.“I had to thank God, and I had to thank my support team and everybody that got me here,” Sanders, whose trail name is Grey Beard, told the Associated Press.Dale Sanders celebrates after completing a difficult section of Mt Katahdin in Baxter state park in Piscataquis county, Maine. Photograph: Robert F Bukaty/APSanders first set the Appalachian Trail record in 2017 when he was 82, only to be overtaken four years later by his 83-year-old friend MJ Eberhart, whose trail name is Nimblewill Nomad.Within months, Sanders announced his comeback plan. But despite six months of training, he told the AP, he still was not in the best condition. “And even today, I feel that I should probably be in better shape than I am,” he said last month. “But I just have to always go back and say: ‘But I am 91, so I’m blazing new ground hiking long distances like this.’”In June, Sanders was descending Killington Mountain in central Vermont when he fell forward in a boulder field, scraping his legs, arms and hands. “Thank God nothing got broken, but I was banged up,” he said. “I didn’t rub the blood off, I just kept hiking.”Weeks later, his left arm went numb and he ended up at a hospital in Maine with what turned out to be a pinched nerve. But although he was soon cleared to resume hiking, he at that point considered giving up.When he returned home to Tennessee in early August to be with his wife, whose mother had just died, she convinced him to press on with his mission.Some of Sanders’ best days were in Pennsylvania, where he said he enjoyed well-maintained trails and treats delivered by “trail angels”. “When people are taking care of you and bringing you caramel frappes on the trail, the rocks don’t matter,” he said.Also pushing him to keep going were his thousands of followers on social media. “I wanna get [my record] back, but right now, that’s secondary,” he told the AP. “Right now, what’s the most important thing – and it’s one of the things that surprised me – is that people are motivated and given encouragement by my efforts.”Sanders takes a brief power nap near Monson, Maine, on 28 July 2026. Photograph: Robert F Bukaty/APSanders was born in Kentucky in 1935, two years before the Appalachian Trail was completed. Bullied as a child for his small size, he gained confidence in solo sports such as acrobatics and swimming. He later served in the navy and retired in 2002 after a long career in parks and recreation.He holds numerous other age-related records, including becoming the oldest person to paddle the entire length of the Mississippi River in 2022, an 87-day trip he started on his 87th birthday.Associated Press contributed reporting