Dale "Grey Beard" Sanders reached the summit of Mount Katahdin on Aug. 31, reclaiming the record as the oldest person to complete the entire 2,193-mile Appalachian Trail — at age 91. He began the hike on Sept. 6, 2025, in West Virginia, then worked the trail in out-of-order sections over the following year, taking breaks between stretches before finishing atop Katahdin's Baxter Peak in Maine.
The comeback was not gentle. Sanders told WBUR he fell 71 times over the course of the hike, including seven "hard falls" — one serious enough to require a brief hospitalization, and another just 200 yards from the finish. He kept going anyway.
Thank God nothing got broken, but I was banged up. I didn't rub the blood off, I just kept hiking.
Dale Sanders, to WBUR
Losing the Title, Then Taking It Back
Sanders first set the oldest-finisher record in 2017 at age 82. Four years later, his friend M.J. Eberhart, known on the trail as Nimblewill Nomad, broke it at 83. Sanders announced his plan for a comeback within months, and this year's finish, reported by CNN and NBC News, reclaims it.
He nearly stopped for good in early August, after his wife's mother died. It was his wife, he said, who pushed him back onto the trail. Along the way, so-called trail angels helped keep him moving, once delivering caramel frappes to him in Pennsylvania.
When people are taking care of you and bringing you caramel frappes on the trail, the rocks don't matter.
Dale Sanders
Sanders credited the people around him more than himself for the finish, and downplayed the record itself compared with what it might inspire in others his age.
I wanna get it back, but right now, that's secondary. Right now, what's the most important thing is that people are motivated.
Dale Sanders
He arrived at Katahdin hours ahead of younger hikers who set out on the same summit day, a detail he mentioned to fellow hikers with evident satisfaction: he had gotten there at noon, while they straggled in at 4 p.m.
