Will French didn’t know he was on the International Appalachian Trail when he began hiking it. It was the spring of 2009, 11 years after French had sold his business and decided to hike the ...

STERLING — When Willard "Will" K. French finished his six-month, 2,160-mile hike from Georgia to Maine in 1998 at 50, he thought he finished the entirety of the Appalachian Trail.