MJ “Sunny” Eberhart is 83 years old, in the hiking world they know him as Nimblewill Nomad and today is the older hiker in completing the Appalachian Trail.
Jorgan Bowman of the Appalachian Trail Conservation group in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, confirmed that Eberhart is the oldest person to finish the route.
In 1993 this man from Alabama retired from his job as an optometrist in Florida. From there he began to take long walks.
Before him, the record was owned Dale “Greybeard” Sanders, who lives outside of Memphis, Tennessee and finished the tour at 82 years, in 2017. He rushed to meet Eberhart and said he was not sad to be outdone on his mark:
“My dear friend Nimblewill is taking my record from me, and I am happy for him. Records are to be broken,” Sanders said.
Hiker acknowledged that it was not easy to walk the Appalachian Trail
Eberhart said that although it totals tens of thousands of kilometers, the road was difficult because of his age. In fact, he suffered a few falls on slippery stones.
“I have a couple of marks on my body from slipping, but I’m fine,” he said. “You have to have incredible determination to do this,” he acknowledged.
Furthermore, this man with long hair and impressive beard traveled the route out of order to take advantage of the better weather, so he walked more than most of those who travel the 2,193-mile (3,530-kilometer) trail that runs between Georgia’s Springer Mountain and Maine’s Mount Katahdin.
He began his hike in February at his home in Flagg Mountain, Alabama, adding hundreds of additional miles to the trail.
The journey represented a modest distance, relatively speaking, for a man who traveled 7,080 kilometers (4,400 miles) from the Florida Keys to northern Québec, an adventure he recounted in a book, “Ten Million Steps” (“Ten Million Steps” Steps”).
He then walked from Newfoundland to Florida, an even longer distance. He also walked from Chicago to California on Route 66.
He will now return home to 1,000 feet (304 meters) of Flagg Mountain – the southernmost Appalachian Mountain – where he works as a caretaker for a ranger tower and some cabins built by the Civil Corps of Conservation.
Developed by La Noticia with information from AP.
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