[cdt-l] Average CDT age?

[Melanie Simmerman]

I didn't think I was going to reply to this topic, was
surprised it became so popular.

Cupcake/John - what can you mean? I was on the PCT in
2002, met you actually, and there were quite a few of
us over 40 -- including me. In fact, on all trails
that I've hiked, there have been quite a contingent of
over 40, even over 50 hikers. Perhaps not as many as
the 20's just out of college crowd...but not
invisible.

In fact, my first thru-hike was the AT in 1996, when I
was 42.  Still going strong. Working on the Triple
Crown, and hope to be out there when I'm 80. My
inspiration is a great hiker (Irene
Cline/"Tag-a-Long": you go girl!)who is now well into
her 80's, and just finished section hiking the ICE AGE
Trail with her sister. I met her in GA once, as she
was finishing her last section of the AT at age 79!

I rarely meet other Manhattanites on thru-hikes,
though!!!! 

Oh - on the famous hikers topic: Jacques D'Amboise,
danseur extraordinaire with Balanchine's NYC Ballet
(long retired and probably well over 50 or 60 at the
time, now Dir. of Nat'l Dance Inst.) thru-hiked the AT
in 1999. I met him in Maine near Gulf Hagas, when I
was working on the MATC/FORCE trail crew.
Lemstar (Melanie) NYC

--- John Brennan <john at frozenpoodle.com> wrote:

> I'm a little late on this thread.
> 
>  
> 
> I turned 40 on the PCT in 2002 and I'll be 44 when I
> finish the CDT this
> year. I did not find a lot of people my age, and I
> often think that maybe I
> should be working on my career, etc. 
> 
>  
> 
> I want to tag on to what GottaWalk said below. In my
> pre-long-distance-backpacking days, I always felt
> that the fact that I was
> gay was invisible. When I hiked the PCT the activist
> in me wanted to be
> visible as a gay man.  That's one of the reasons I
> took the name Cupcake.
> Somewhere along the way (as "we did our miles and
> found the water and camped
> out"), it stopped being important. I was a hiker. On
> the CDT, I tried to
> switch back to John, but most people knew me as
> Cupcake. 
> 
>  
> 
> It's been great to meet the other LGBT hikers out
> there and my visibility
> has facilitated that, but in the end we are all just
> hikers. Cool.
> 
>  
> 
> Wouldn't it be great if a thru-hike was a
> prerequisite for world leaders?
> Image "World Troop" thru-hiking, including Bush,
> al-Sistani, Talabani,
> Ahmadineja, Jong-il, Karzai, Putin, Blair, Olmert,
> Abbas, al-Assad and
> Abdullah. 
> 
> -John / Cupcake
> 
>   _____  
> 
> From: cdt-l-bounces at backcountry.net
> [mailto:cdt-l-bounces at backcountry.net]
> On Behalf Of Marcia
> Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2007 12:55 PM
> To: cdt-l at backcountry.net
> Subject: Re: [cdt-l] Average CDT age?
> 
>  
> 
> <Snip>One of my happiest realizations was that I was
> a hiker. I walked my
> miles like everybody else and hung out in town with
> the other hikers. I
> didn't feel like a female or older hiker...I was
> just one of the hikers to
> the point that a Hiker isn't a gender, age, income
> level, education level or
> former occupation. I was a Hiker just like the
> others and we did our miles
> and found the water and camped out.
> 
>  <snip>
> 
> > _______________________________________________
> cdt-l mailing list
> cdt-l at backcountry.net
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> 



 
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