[at-l] From my local paper...Earl

[mrninduv@yahoo.com (Eva)]

Tuesday, May 7, 2002 
Earl Shaffer, first to hike whole Appalachian
Trail, dead at 83

YORK SPRINGS, Pa. (AP) — Earl Shaffer, the first
person to hike all 2,160 miles of the Appalachian
Trail in one journey in 1948, has died. He was
83.

Shaffer, who developed almost a cult following
among hikers, died Sunday at the Lebanon Veterans
Administration Medical Center after a bout with
cancer.

At the time that Shaffer completed his four-month
journey from Georgia to Maine, such a trip was
not thought desirable or even possible.

Shaffer later hiked the trial in the other
direction, and in 1998 — 50 years after his first
hike and just months before his 80th birthday —
he hiked the route all over again.

After completing his final end-to-ender, Shaffer
said in Millinocket, Maine, that the trail has
been made a lot more difficult in the 50 years
since his first hike.

"It’s an almost impossible trip," said Shaffer,
lamenting that the original vision of a footpath
connecting camps along the route had given way to
a rugged wilderness experience.

Shaffer’s first hike along the trail’s entire
length was so surprising that skeptical officials
of the Appalachian Trail Conference — accustomed
to the trail being used by day-hikers — grilled
him with questions. He later served as
corresponding secretary of the organization for
many years.

"I think hikers really looked up to Earl. The
young kids were really in awe of him," said
Laurie Potteiger, information services
coordinator of the conference, based in Harpers
Ferry, W. Va. "They admired the way he could get
by on such little gear and, by today’s standards,
primitive gear. He didn’t have high-tech,
lightweight stuff. He carried an old Army-issued
rucksack. That’s something we hadn’t seen anybody
carry for decades."

At home, Shaffer lived a reclusive farm life
without running water. He heated his converted
chicken-house home with a wood stove and earned a
living by clerking at auctions, fixing up antique
furniture and selling honey from his beehives.

He was unmarried and complained about just
wanting to be left alone.

Shaffer detailed his hikes in two books: "Walking
with Spring," which was about his 1948 hike, and
"The Appalachian Trail: Calling Me Back to the
Hills," which recounts his trip four years ago.

"I’m losing a close friend," said Dave Donaldson,
a hiker who encountered Shaffer during Shaffer’s
1998 trip and ended up spending three weeks
hiking with him. Donaldson later visited him in
the hospital.

"On the other hand, at this point, it’s a better
thing for him," Donaldson said. "He lived an
outdoors life, a very physical-type of living. He
got water off the mountain from a spring. ...
What a terrible experience when you can’t lift
your body out of bed. That’s no way to live."

Funeral services will be private with a public
memorial service, the date and place of which has
not yet been decided.
 


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