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When we set off to join Dale Sanders, known as Grey Beard, on his mission to hike the entire Appalachian Trail, an unspoken assumption guided much of our planning: How hard could hiking with a 91-year-old be?
We’re both hikers who do this sort of thing for fun. But to document Mr. Sanders’s bid to reclaim his record as the oldest person to complete the trail, we’d have to cover around 12 miles a day up steep inclines and down slippery roots and rocks — all while carrying around 30 pounds of camera equipment between us, not to mention food and other essentials.
And first, we’d have to find him.
On any given day, Mr. Sanders’s location along the trail’s roughly 2,190 miles depended on his pace and the weather, both difficult to anticipate more than a few days in advance. We reached out to Mr. Sanders’s support team after an editor heard about his hike, and we watched for months as his GPS dot made steady but unpredictable progress.
Then we got a call from a volunteer who was helping plan his route: Mr. Sanders was starting his four-day traverse of a notorious section through the White Mountains in New Hampshire, two days earlier than we had planned to meet up with him. We had to hustle from New York to intercept him.
Racing out there wasn’t such an imposition. Mr. Sanders was planning to take on some of the country’s most scenic trails and sleep in the historic backcountry huts maintained by the Appalachian Mountain Club.
We’re both drawn to reporting in challenging settings. Luke comes from a documentary filmmaking background. He has navigated volatile weather and difficult topography while working on projects in the rainforests of India, the tropical terrain of the Caribbean and deep underground in the copper mines of Chile. Chris, who has a background as a reporter covering fitness and the outdoors, has spent years chasing stories on foot and interviewing people while they — and he — are out of breath.
We both enjoy working in these unpredictable environments. And we knew we needed to hike alongside Mr. Sanders to really capture his quest. Some of the best stories come during the in-between moments that you can’t anticipate — the ones you find by going out into the world, building trust with your subject and sharing an experience together. (Or, as we discovered on our first night in the huts, by sharing a triple-decker bunk bed.)
Appalachian Trail hikers tend to be zealous about reducing the weight of their packs, shaving ounces by forgoing luxuries like a change of clothes, or something to read, or deodorant. Our backpacks, by contrast, were loaded down with equipment.
Because Luke was shooting both photo and video for the story, he needed to bring enough gear to be self-sufficient without electricity — including three days’ worth of batteries — but still be light and mobile enough to cover miles of rugged mountain terrain without slowing us down.
Chris volunteered as a pack mule, and encouraged Luke to bring anything that would help the story. (Chris determined later that he was carrying enough weight to void the warranty on his pack.)
For the video, Luke settled on a pair of Canon cinema cameras. For photographs, he switched between one of the Canons and his favorite camera for portraits: a Hasselblad 501CM, a nearly four-pound medium-format film camera. Lugging this fully mechanical contraption up multiple mountains added to our load, but it produced some of our favorite photos from the journey.
We learned that the White Mountains will punish you for every ounce. Many of the trails in this range were built before switchbacks came into fashion: They simply head straight up. At one point, we found ourselves descending a gushing waterfall. This would have felt like a wrong turn — if the signature white blazes that mark the route of the Appalachian Trail had not assured us that, yes, directly down the nearly vertical wet rock was exactly where we needed to go.
Ultimately, we were able to keep up with Mr. Sanders, but not without considerable effort — and one lens-shattering fall off a rock ledge. (Luke, and the camera, were OK.)
We had planned to part ways with Mr. Sanders after arriving at the hut for the second night. But when we got there, somewhat behind schedule and during a heavy rainstorm, the chipper 20-somethings who staff the huts encouraged us to accept their hospitality for the night. (The “croo,” as they’re known, also double as backcountry safety experts.)
This scrambled our plans, but it came with a certain thrill. When conditions in the mountains force you to spend the night somewhere unexpected, you’re really on an adventure.
The next morning, we walked out of the mountains in the previous day’s still-soaked clothes. We had a few bruises and two drenched iPhones that wouldn’t turn on — along with a deeper appreciation for the Appalachian Trail, and for what Mr. Sanders is accomplishing.
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