Gene Espy, pioneering Appalachian Trail dude, gone at 98

Nice article in the NYT that should be accessible without being a subscriber. He was the second person to thru-hike the whole length of the trail – did it in 1951.

But on May 31, 1951, when he was 24, he began a new journey that was even more arduous and seemingly preposterous: hiking the length of the Appalachian Trail, some 2,000 miles, northward from Georgia to Maine, in a single, continuous trek known as a “thru-hike.”

It had been done once before, in 1948, by Earl Shaffer, a Pennsylvanian. But Mr. Espy didn’t know about Mr. Shaffer until a farmer showed him a newspaper clipping while he was already on his expedition.

“He didn’t do it to be the first,” Mr. Espy’s daughter Jane Gilsinger said in an interview. “He did it to have fun and see God in nature.”

Here is his college 1950 yearbook picture –