Dale Sanders has reclaimed his place as the oldest hiker to complete the Appalachian Trail, finishing the route at 91 after a journey marked by 71 falls, a hospital stay and repeated reminders of just how demanding the trek had become.

Known on the trail as Grey Beard, Mr Sanders first set the record in 2017 at age 82. In 2021, his 83-year-old friend M.J. Eberhart, aka Nimblewill Nomad, claimed it. Within months, Mr Sanders revealed plans to try again.

This time, the effort proved far tougher than his first Appalachian Trail journey, which he had found easier than expected. Even after six months of training, he said he was not in peak condition when he went back.

“And even today, I feel that I should probably be in better shape than I am,” he said last month. “But I just have to always go back and say, ‘But I am 91, so I’m blazing new ground hiking long distances like this’.”

The Appalachian Trail Conservancy defines a thru-hike as completing all of the trail’s sections in any order within a year, allowing for pauses. Mr Sanders began on September 6 in West Virginia, moved around the route with brief breaks, and finished on Monday on Mount Katahdin in Maine, the state’s highest peak. At the summit sign, he stopped to pray.

“I had to thank God, and I had to thank my support team and everybody that got me here,” he said.

The Appalachian Trail stretches 3500km between Springer Mountain in Georgia and Mount Katahdin in Maine. None of the falls Mr Sanders suffered were enough to permanently pull him off it, even though six were what he described as hard falls. One led to a brief hospitalisation. Another happened less than a kilometre from the finish.

One of the worst came in June while he was coming down Killington Mountain in central Vermont. He pitched forward in a boulder field and scraped his legs, arms and hands.

“Thank God nothing got broken, but I was banged up,” he said. “I didn’t rub the blood off, I just kept hiking.”

Weeks later, his left arm went numb and he was taken to a Maine hospital. Doctors first feared he had suffered a stroke, but the problem was a pinched nerve. He was cleared to return to the trail soon after, though he did think about quitting.

In early August, he went back home to Tennessee to be with his wife after her mother died. She persuaded him to continue.

Over time, Mr Sanders said the purpose of the hike shifted. Reclaiming the record mattered, but no longer seemed like the main point.

“I wanna get it back, but right now, that’s secondary,” he said. “Right now, 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.”

That response caught him off guard. The 91-year-old became a favourite among other hikers, and thousands more followed his progress on social media.

Some of his happiest stretches came in Pennsylvania, where he praised the trail conditions and the kindness of “trail angels” who brought him treats.

“When people are taking care of you and bringing you caramel frappés on the trail, the rocks don’t matter,” he said.

Meredith Ewenson met Mr Sanders in June while leading a hike in New Hampshire for 10 other women. She said he represented more than the idea that anything is possible, and showed that the journey itself matters most.

“Seeing it in real life is something that I’ll definitely remember forever,” she said.

Ms Ewenson said her group noticed Mr Sanders early that morning. Only later, after he sped past them hours afterward, did they spot the Grey Beard logo on his T-shirt and understand who he was. They met him again that evening at an Appalachian Mountain Club hut, arriving at about 4pm.

“I got here at noon,” he told them.

The following morning, Ms Ewenson and others watched and cheered as Mr Sanders did a “victory dance” before heading out again.

“My first thought was ‘Wow, his mobility is insane’,” Ms Ewenson said. “His face on that body just doesn’t make any sense. My brain couldn’t compute how he was so impossibly fit for being that age.”

Mr Sanders was born in Kentucky in 1935, two years before the Appalachian Trail was completed. Picked on as a child because of his small size, he found confidence through solo sports including acrobatics and swimming. He later served in the Navy, then retired in 2002 after a long career in parks and recreation.

He also holds several other age-related records, among them becoming the oldest person to paddle the full length of the Mississippi River, an 87-day expedition he began on his 87th birthday.