91-year-old becomes oldest person to complete the Appalachian Trail
Tennessee resident Dale Sanders, 91, has reclaimed his record as the oldest person to complete the 2,193-mile Appalachian Trail, surviving dozens of falls and one hospitalization along the way.
Dale Sanders, a 91-year-old retiree from Tennessee, has finished the entire 2,193-mile Appalachian Trail, which runs from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine. The achievement restores the age record he first set nearly a decade ago.
Sanders said he fell 71 times during the journey, six of them hard falls, and one required a brief hospital stay. Another fall came just 200 yards from the finish. Under the Appalachian Trail Conservancy's definition, a thru-hike means completing every section of the trail, in any order, within a single year, with pauses allowed.
Known by his trail name "Grey Beard," Sanders began the hike on 6 September 2025 in West Virginia. After several breaks along the way, he reached the summit of Katahdin, Maine's highest peak, on Monday, where he stopped to pray at the sign marking the top and to thank his support team.
Sanders first claimed the oldest-thru-hiker record in 2017 at age 82. Four years later, his friend MJ Eberhart took the title at age 83. Sanders soon announced plans for a comeback attempt, though he admitted that even six months of training left him short of the shape he wanted to be in.
Setbacks along the way
In June, while descending Killington Mountain in Vermont, Sanders fell in a boulder field and scraped his legs, arms and hands. Weeks later, numbness in his left arm sent him to a hospital in Maine, where doctors diagnosed a pinched nerve; he briefly considered quitting. In early August, after returning home to be with his wife following her mother's death, she encouraged him to continue.
Sanders credited support from thousands of social media followers and from "trail angels" who brought him food and drinks along the route for keeping him motivated. Born in Kentucky in 1935, he served in the navy and retired in 2002 after a long career in parks and recreation. He also holds the record as the oldest person to paddle the full length of the Mississippi River, a feat he completed in 2022.
