A 91-YEAR-OLD hiker has reclaimed his record as the oldest person to complete the Appalachian Trail, despite falling 71 times during the epic journey.
Dale Sanders – known on the trail as ‘Grey Beard’ – reached the summit of Mount Katahdin in Maine yesterday, completing the entire 2,198-mile route from Georgia to Maine.
The latest achievement marks the second time Sanders has held the record. He first became the oldest person to complete the Appalachian Trail in 2017, aged 82, before his friend M.J. Eberhart – known as ‘Nimblewill Nomad’ – took the title four years later at the age of 83.
This time, Sanders began his attempt on September 6 2025 in West Virginia, completing the trail in sections with breaks along the way.
The Appalachian Trail Conservancy considers a thru-hike to be completion of the entire trail within 12 months, meaning Sanders’ segmented approach still qualifies. The Appalachian Trail stretches through 14 states, from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Katahdin in Maine.
Sanders admits his latest adventure was considerably tougher than his first record-breaking attempt. By his own count, he fell 71 times.
Six of those were what he described as hard falls, including one which resulted in a brief spell in hospital. Another came just 200 yards from the finish. In June, he fell heavily while descending Killington Mountain in Vermont, landing in a boulder field and scraping his arms, legs and hands. Then, several weeks later, his left arm went numb. Doctors initially feared he had suffered a stroke, but the problem turned out to be a pinched nerve and he was eventually cleared to continue.
It wasn’t the only point at which Sanders considered giving up. He returned home to Tennessee in early August after the death of his wife’s mother, but his wife encouraged him to go back and finish what he had started.
On Monday, he reached the summit of Katahdin, where he stopped to pray and thank the people who had helped him along the way.
Sanders’ trail name has become increasingly familiar to the Appalachian Trail community. Thousands of people now follow his progress online, something that appears to have surprised the veteran adventurer himself.
But somewhere along the way, the attempt to reclaim his record became less important than the people watching him make it.
“I wanna get it back, but right now, that’s secondary,” Sanders said during the hike.
“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.”
The route is already an enormous physical undertaking. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy says most people who attempt a thru-hike take between five and seven months, with the average coming in just short of six months. Only around one in three people who attempt the entire trail actually complete it.
Born in Kentucky in 1935, Sanders served in the US Navy before retiring from a long career in parks and recreation.
He has also made his mark on the water. In 2022, at the age of 87, he paddled the entire length of the Mississippi River in 87 days, travelling around 2,350 miles from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico and setting a Guinness World Records title as the oldest man to paddle the river’s length.
His adventures have followed a remarkably consistent philosophy of keep moving, keep exploring and don’t allow age to become an automatic reason to stop.
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