YORK SPRINGS, Pa. – Earl Shaffer, the first person to hike all 2,160 miles of the Appalachian Trail in one journey in 1948, has died. He was 83.

Shaffer, who developed almost a cult following among hikers, died Sunday at the Lebanon Veterans Administration Medical Center after a bout with cancer.

At the time that Shaffer completed his four-month journey from Georgia to Maine, such a trip was not thought desirable or even possible.

Shaffer later hiked the trail in the other direction, and in 1998 – 50 years after his first hike and just months before his 80th birthday – he hiked the route all over again.

After completing his final end-to-ender, Shaffer said in Millinocket, Maine, that the trail had been made a lot more difficult in the 50 years since his first hike.

“It’s an almost impossible trip,” said Shaffer, lamenting that the original vision of a footpath connecting camps along the route had given way to a rugged wilderness experience.

Shaffer’s first hike along the trail’s entire length was so surprising that skeptical officials of the Appalachian Trail Conference – accustomed to the trail being used by day-hikers – grilled him with questions. He later served as corresponding secretary of the organization for many years.

At home, Shaffer lived a reclusive farm life without running water. He heated his converted chicken-house home with a wood stove and earned a living by clerking at auctions, fixing up antique furniture and selling honey from his beehives.