Blind Hiker Mike Hanson completes the Appalachian Trail

[Daniel Eagan]

Interesting story posted on Slate: http://www.slate.com/articles/techn...nology_to_conquer_the_appalachian.single.html

He used Loadstone GPS on an iPhone. Also had a filmmaker following him who presumably could provide help.

Similar to Randy Pierce's feat: http://www.vftt.org/forums/showthre...f-Randy-Pierce-s-single-season-winter-48-2012

 

[SherpaWill]

This is a great story.

 

[Jay H]

Pretty cool, I hope he had help with some of the road crossings though (Rt 17 by Harriman State Park comes to mind...)

Jay

 

[RollingRock]

What an amazing accomplishment! It's hard for us to even have some idea what effort and motivation it took to complete this. Most folks drop out when they first start out on the AT...never mind doing it blind! My mom is 100% blind and I'll certainly share this story with her. Thanks!

 

[RoySwkr]

Bill Irwin was partially sighted and had a guide dog and still he had a tough trip.

Mike Hanson supposedly skipped some sections but even so it's hard to imagine - there are a lot of roots and rocks to stumble over and careful probing would take far too long. Railroads are spending billions of dollars to implement positive train control because the sort of GPS that can be mounted on a locomotive even with differential GPS can't be sure which of parallel tracks a trail is on. There are plenty of spots on the A.T. where the distance between two RR tracks would be greater than the (horizontal) distance between the top of a cliff and the bottom!