[NAGDU] Article about serious blind hiker

[Tracy Carcione]

This is an article from AFB Access World about a blind hiker and his guide
dog.

Tracy

 


The Hiker and Tennille: Trevor Thomas on The Trail


Deborah Kendrick

When Trevor Thomas lost his sight 10 years ago, he heard a lot about all the
things he could no longer do. Most of those "can'ts" involved the activities
he had loved best all his life.

Since boyhood, Thomas had immersed himself in what he calls extreme sports.
At age 3, he started skiing. Over time, his activity dance card included
hiking, mountain biking, racing Porsches, sky diving, and more. Sometimes,
he pursued the sports he loved in the company of others, sometimes not. The
constant was his love of risk-taking and testing limits, particularly the
limit of his own physical endurance.

Then, a rare autoimmune disease changed the game. Overnight, he was
significantly visually impaired. At the end of eight months, he was totally
blind.

He had finished law school with the dismaying albeit crystal clear
recognition that he had no desire to practice law. He had embarked on that
educational journey with a fascination for our legal system, but finished
his law school education with a certain disdain for corporate practices and
billable hours.

"I never took the bar exam," he explains. "And I never will."

He had lost his sight, lost interest in the career path that had taken years
of study to complete, and now had naysayers apprising him of his new
options, which ranged from limited to nonexistent. A blind guy, ran the
conventional wisdom, could forget about all those outdoor sports activities.


Telling the Story with Miles


Some 20,000 miles later, those who believed Trevor Thomas was no longer a
hiker were obviously mistaken. Since losing his sight, he has hiked more
than 20,000 miles, including all 2,175 miles of the Appalachian Trail and
the 3,000 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail. Before losing his sight, he says
he was barely a recreational hiker, camping in the back country for a
weekend here or there. Today, the shorter spells are the ones he spends off
the trail.

The first several thousand miles Trevor Thomas hiked with a sighted partner.
But his partner failed to show one day in Colorado, and the idea of getting
a guide dog began to take shape. If he intended to continue rigorous long
distance hiking and intended not to turn over the control of when and where
he could do that hiking, Trevor concluded that a trained guide dog was the
only reasonable solution. He needed eyes to see what lay ahead on
unpredictable trails, and his own eyes weren't working. 

His background in corporate sales gave him plenty of confidence and
conversation so, thinking it was a matter of signing up, he picked up the
phone and began calling guide dog training schools. Living in North
Carolina, it only made sense that he began with schools nearest the east
coast.

One after another, the schools rejected his plan. A guide dog, they told
him, could not handle the kind of stress and terrain he was describing. His
plan, they said, was dangerous and irresponsible. They weren't in the
business of training dogs for hikers.

Then he called Guide Dogs for the Blind. He explained again his love of
hiking and his desire to use a guide dog to help him navigate the trails.
The reaction, a novel one by now to his ears, was one of challenged
curiosity. They didn't know if it would work, but they were almost as
interested as Trevor to find out.


A Match Made in Heaven


In October 2012, Trevor Thomas returned home with his new hiking partner, a
black Labrador named Tennille. While in training at the Guide Dogs for the
Blind school in San Rafael, California, Trevor and Tennille completed the
same coursework typical students complete. He learned to command Tennille
through town and across streets, to make turns without encountering
obstacles, and to locate doorways and stairs.

They also hiked trails in the John Muir Wilderness, using the same signature
positive reinforcement techniques employed by the school to teach Tennille
to alert Trevor to landscape elements needed for his hiking safety.
Tennille's first significant hike with her new partner was 1,000 miles of
the Mountains to Sea Trail, hiking from Clingman's Dome in western North
Carolina to Jockey's Ridge State Park on the Outer Banks. It took two and a
half months and no one, not even Trevor Thomas, knew for sure whether
Tennille could return to guiding him through city work after that adventure.

She did. On the trail, Tennille carries a backpack with about 3 pounds of
her doggie essentials: her bowl, her boots, her Ruffwear, and her favorite
elk antler chew toy. Trevor now carries between 38 and 42 pounds, including
food for both himself and Tennille, a two-person tent, stove, water
purification system, and a few pieces of essential technology.


Trail Preparation


Time spent in the back country ranges from one to seven months for Trevor
Thomas, and he estimates that he spends one hour of preparation time for
each mile on the trail.

To prepare, he sits down with his expedition coordinator who has gathered
every available guidebook and topographical map of the trail. With
excruciating detail, the trail is outlined in writing, noting every possible
touchable marker available. A cliff, a boulder field, a road to cross, a
stream, or river. That detailed course description is then emailed to
Trevor's iPhone and serves as his audio navigation on the trail.

"If I know I have about 3 miles to go before a designated turn," he
explains, I know from time and my own cadence when we've gone about 2.5
miles of that distance. I then begin to echolocate and follow Tennille to
identify the touch marker that tells us when to turn."

Tennille has alerted him to countless dangers, from cliffs to boulder fields
to rattlesnakes. "I'm the big picture guy," he summarizes, "and she is the
detail girl."

He does not carry GPS equipment. Besides the rapid burning of batteries, he
says that much of the terrain he hikes would not be clearly marked by GPS
software anyway. Instead, both he and Tennille constantly send Google Earth
pictures of where they are back to his expedition coordinator, who can then
confirm that they are where they expected to be.

"I'm really not very tech savvy," Trevor says. He owns every Apple product
-- iPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple TV, and a MacBook--but says that he doesn't use
any of them with any significant level of sophistication.

The emailed trail instructions documents can be saved to his phone and thus
don't depend on a cellular signal. For emergencies, he carries a satellite
phone, which enables him to call anywhere at any time.

When not on the trail, Trevor says that Tennille absolutely requires walking
at least 10 to 15 miles daily. And he has taught her some pretty amazing
city tricks as well.

"In the grocery store," he boasts, "she can identify at least 25 different
products." He says he can direct her to find pharmacy, deli, coffee, wine,
bread, and more, and she does each flawlessly--encouraged, of course, with
praise and a treat for each success.


Sponsorships


Trevor Thomas says that his future will always include hiking. The former
corporate sales representative and law school graduate is now a professional
hiker and fulltime ambassador for a host of outdoor and canine products. He
and Tennille are sponsored by companies such as Marmot, Big Agnes, Ruffwear,
Cliff, Taste of the Wild, Ahnu, and Camelbak, among others. They don't
accept sponsorship from any product they don't use or fully support.

To read more about Trevor Thomas and Tennille or follow their next
adventure, visit Trevor's website
<http://www.blindhikertrevorthomas.com/About-Trevor.html> .

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