Jun 28, 2018

George Andrews has a deep love of hikers and hiking so, when he retired, he wanted to involve himself in the community. He had always been keen to keep the weight of his pack and everything in it as low as possible, so this led him to start a company in that field, AntiGravityGear. He refers to himself as a "tinkerer,"...

Jun 21, 2018

Buddy Wier is something of a late bloomer. He became interested in hiking after his retirement, accumulating gear though not immediately getting out to hike. He had always been a traveler and soon combined his love of travel with the various opportunities that arose to hike.

Having traveled extensively and hiking when...

Jun 14, 2018

Linnea Van Manen struggled with Lyme Disease as a young girl and felt the effects through her teens. Lyme manifested itself by intense bouts of bursitis in her knees, so much so that a year before heading out to the Appalachian Trail for a solo thru-hike, Linnea was confined to a wheelchair for some of the time.

She...

Jun 7, 2018

Kayla McCarthy, her father, and her mother set out to hike the Appalachian Trail in 2014. Only Kayla and her mother reached Katahdin as her father injured himself and had to leave the trail. As Kayla told her story I was struck by how much the dynamic of their hike had to change, with Kayla stepping up into...