HFlier and others,

Been watching this thread, but held off responding until I had something good to say.

I'm 76 this year, and for the last two years, have done very little hiking. I've had leukemia for years, but it didn't effect me much until recently. My blood pressure has been creeping up very slowly for some time, but it stayed under diet/exercise control.

Then I got hit with a self-perpetuating anemia that is a fairly common complication of the Leukemia. I ended up in the hospital via the ER. The doctors used some pretty nasty drugs (Prednisone, 100 mg/day) to get it under control, and then started rather agressive chemo. The good news (very good news) is that the chemo was successful, and the Leukima is now in remission. But the drugs left me with a hard-to-stabilize diabetes, much elevated blood pressure, and barely able to walk.

This whole siege started when I bugged out of a planned 16 day thru-hike of the Ozark Highlands trail after the third day because I realized I was too weak to be in the woods by myself.

But the point of this post is that I am hiking and canoeing again. Locally, so far, but may try the Arkansas trip again in the spring, and I've been out several days checking GPS coordinates on a nearby trail. I'm even seriously thinking about doing the AT thru again at 80 (did it at 60 and 70)

So, answer to the question posed: Yeah, I got pretty darn slow for awhile, but I don't think I'll stay that way.

Hope there are lots of others here who can say the same. What's the line, "we don't stop hiking cause we get old, we get old because we stop hiking.

Go for it folks. Best, jcp