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Eighty-year-old identical twins achieve teenage dream of completing the Appalachian Trail

Mount Guyot in the Great Smoky Mountains, looking south from the Appalachian Trail. | Wikimedia Commons/Brian Stansberry

A pair of 80-year-old twins proved that age is just a number by covering the entire Appalachian Trail, one of the longest hiking paths in the world, on foot.

Spanning 2,190 miles, the Appalachian Trail is usually left to young adventurers, but twin sisters Elrose Couric and Sue Hollinger begged to differ. Even if it took them more than 13 years to finish the trail, starting in 2002, they finally completed it in July 2016.

The twins covered the footpath in sections, covering around 200 miles per year. There were days when they would cover almost 20 miles. In some days, they would cover less than 10.

"We wished we were daring enough or young enough to do a thru-hike. It would have saved lots of time, but we couldn't," Hollinger told Citizen-Times about the hike.

It was the twins' dream to hike the Appalachian Trail back when they were teenagers. "But girls didn't do that sort of thing then," Couric shared. So after conquering the trails of Great Smoky Mountains National Park and all peaks of Western North Carolina starting in their 60s, they set a goal of making their teenage dream a reality.

According to Hollinger, her desire to spend a lot of time with her sister kept her going in reaching their goal, Inside Edition reported.

The energetic duo was joined by family members for the final stretch of their hiking mission. "Our family was so proud of us," Hollinger told Inside Edition, adding, "The last week of our hike, our grandchildren hiked with us; they were really into it."

Hollinger and Couric, who are both widows, now reside in Florida together, making up for nearly 30 years of separation.

According to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, more than 15,500 thru-hikers and section hikers have completed the entirety of the trail since its completion in the 1930s. About 25 percent of them are women.