https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/xtkkr1/71yearold_man_hikes_usas_gruelling_4000km_pacific/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb

Most people, regardless of age, look a bit ragged and ropey after a long through hike. I have done a few myself and have friends who have done the PCT. There’s always a marked difference. You might look rough, but despite a bit of muscle soreness, you feel awesome.

Even after 2 weeks canoeing on a river in Oregon last year my body transformed significantly and I was seeing ab muscles that I didn’t even realize I had.

Typically, the weight returns pretty quickly. In fact, you have to be a bit careful because it takes no time at all for your body to plump up beyond your normal weight the first month or so after a long or intense expedition.

I'm 31 and in okay shape, play sports etc. I don't even know if I could accomplish what he has just completed, 2500 Miles across rough terrain, having to survive on your own for days sometimes?

At 71, after hiking that distance and still being able to walk straight, that's an achievement and a half. Quick haircut, beard trim and a shower and I bet this guy would look a day over 60 ffs.

Yes. It’s the 4000km. People don’t realize you just don’t leisurely walk these trails. They don’t realize how well planned out these hikes are, with waypoints that must be reached by a certain day for food, weather that happens, holdbacks where you need to catch-up, breaks and pacing. He camped most of the nights, so he had to stop to setup. He needed to make the vast majority of his meals.

You can’t just “Walk what you feel like,” each day and make it to the end. If he determined weather was changing faster than he thought and he needed to finish by “Day Whatever” to beat the weather, his pace may have been 2-3x what it was earlier. He could have decided he’s almost there and just wanting to finish, pushed hard the last week.

It’s 4000km. It took months. This is what walking, outside, living out of a back pack, looks like; you aren’t worried about appearances. You are worried about food, shelter and how far you need to go that day.

It doesn't take away from what he's doing, but a lot of retirees hike the trail. Billy Goat is one of the best known. He's a legend.

This is John Anderson, I know him personally! He and his wife, Flip Anderson, first met while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. They decided to hike it again together after all these years. John and Flip are incredible people. When they’re not hiking the PCT, they design and build rocket stoves out of mud. The Rocket Stove is an amazing development in fuel efficient cooking. Made with clay and organic material (like rice hulls or sawdust) this inexpensive stove can cook meals with small sticks and eliminate the need for cutting down trees. They’ve taught villages in Haiti to build these stoves to help slow down deforestation.

John and Flip helped me and a team of people learn how to make these stoves so we could teach the villages high up in the Northeast and Northwest mountains of Thailand. The people group there are called Hmong and are very poor, living in huts made of sticks and have dirt floors. Those in these villages cook with three-rock fires and the smoke has given many people health issues form breathing it in from a very young age. The Rocket Stove is nearly smokeless because it is fuel efficient, which was a better cooking alternative for their health. This was all possible thanks to John and Flip!

You save up money beforehand or have some passive income. I saved for about eight months, couch surfing before. The trail crosses roads every 30-100 miles or so, and sometimes the road crossings have a tiny post office or gas station that accept mail boxes for hikers. In a few rare cases it is easy to hitchhike to a medium sized grocery store, or the trail even goes though a town. You sleep in a tent or under the stars if you want. My hike took 144 days, and had about a week of hotels, mostly in Washington where it rained for a week so hotels were the only option to get dry. Most people who hike do it after retirement, or when they become empty nesters, or after they graduate from college, or before doing a master's/doctorate program, or while switching between jobs. A few thousand people do it each year.