[NAGDU] Article about serious blind hiker

Fri Apr 15 16:47:10 UTC 2016

I’d love to doa long distance hike like the AT.

Like many of us, though, I am not independently wealthy and don’t have sponsors!

and, yeah, the media probably twisted things a bit, but it’s still a neat thing.

Cait

> On Apr 15, 2016, at 8:35 AM, Tracy Carcione via NAGDU <nagdu at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Yeah Cait, I remember Bill Irwin, too, so I was surprised this guy was
> turned down.  Who knows? <shrug>
> But I thought it was cool.  I'd like to go hiking, though not anywhere near
> as far as this guy.  I don't have anyone detail-oriented enough to do the
> kind of prep he does, though.
> Tracy
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: NAGDU [mailto:nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Caitlyn Furness
> via NAGDU
> Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2016 3:43 PM
> To: NAGDU Mailing List, the National Association of Guide Dog Users
> Cc: Caitlyn Furness
> Subject: Re: [NAGDU] Article about serious blind hiker
> 
> Tracey,
> 
> thanks so much for sending this article along!!
> 
> I found it interesting, though, that the guide dog schools turned him down
> at first.  Bill Irwin was a seeing eye grad and hiked the AT years ago.
> 
> Cait
> 
>> On Apr 14, 2016, at 2:49 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:%20Trevo
>> r%20Th
>> omas%20on%20The%20Trail> .
>> 
>> 
>> 
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