[NAGDU] Article about serious blind hiker

[The Pawpower Pack]

This is fantastic! 
I always love reading about people who break down the limits of wht sighted people think is possible and realize their dreams! 
Although I'm nowhere near this guy's level of activity, I do sports with my dog and love it! 


 Rox and the kitchen Bitches: 
Mill'E, Laveau, Soleil
Pawpower4me at gmail.com
Sent from my iPhone

> On Apr 14, 2016, at 1:49 PM, Tracy Carcione via NAGDU <nagdu at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> 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> .
> 
> Comment on this article
> <mailto:lhuffman at afb.net?subject=The%20Hiker%20and%20Tennille:%20Trevor%20Th
> omas%20on%20The%20Trail> .
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> NAGDU mailing list
> NAGDU at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nagdu_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for NAGDU:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nagdu_nfbnet.org/pawpower4me%40gmail.com