Dale "Grey Beard" Sanders, 91, has reclaimed his title as the oldest person ever to complete a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail, finishing atop Mount Katahdin in Maine on Monday. The achievement is remarkable given the trail's severity: the roughly 2,200-mile route crosses 14 states with about 929,000 feet of combined elevation change, and Sanders fell 71 times during his hike, including six "hard falls" that led to a brief hospitalisation, before completing the final stretch just 200 yards from the finish.

Sanders first set the record in 2017 at age 82, lost it in 2021 to his friend M.J. "Nimblewill Nomad" Eberhart, who finished at 83, and then set out to win it back. He began this latest attempt in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, on 6 September 2025, hiking south before pausing for winter and resuming north in spring, averaging around 12 miles a day and completing the full trail in 359 days. Sanders, born in 1935, is notably older than the Appalachian Trail itself, which was completed in 1937, and has previously set age records paddling the Mississippi River and hiking the Grand Canyon's rim-to-rim route.