91-Year-Old "Greybeard" Becomes Oldest Appalachian Trail Thru-Hiker After 359 Days and 71 Falls

Dale Sanders isn’t the kind of man who lets a number tell him what to do. At 91 years old, the Kentucky native known on the trail as“Greybeard”completed a 359-day thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail on August 31, finishing at nearly midnight in Maine and earning the title of oldest person ever to complete the trail. Along the way, he fell 71 times, spent a brief stretch in the hospital with a pinched nerve, and said goodbye to a family member. Through all of it, his wife kept telling him to finish what he started. So he went back to pick up a section he’d missed in the Great Smoky Mountains, then pushed on north to Katahdin.

His strategy was smart for a man in his nineties. Sanders started last September at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, and hiked south to Georgia first to take advantage of warmer weather. He wintered over, then turned north. He credits much of his success to“trail angels,”the volunteers and strangers who bring hikers food and supplies. Sometimes that meant a caramel frappe, which he says makes the rocks a whole lot easier to take.

This isn’t even his first time finishing the AT. Sanders completed the entire trail in 2017 at 82, and recently became the oldest person to hike rim-to-rim at the Grand Canyon. His health advice is refreshingly simple: it’s okay to eat doughnuts, as long as you also exercise. If that’s the formula, it clearly works.

What’s the one adventure you keep saying you’re too old for? Tell us in the comments.