Gardener1850
Timeline Guru (Still Remembering Cupcake)
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Looking through new comments on old threads....Is this him?? (Apparently) taken at Christ Lutheran Church in Duncannon, PA. Can't find the original source. The church does "hiker meal ministries"
Bringing this forward. I believe the above photo may be the earliest photo we have of Denim on the AT. That was either June or July 2017 in Duncannon, PA. We only have claims that others met him in Unionville, NY before that and stories of him supposedly telling hikers that he started in Bear Mountain Park in NY. There are no photos of him at Unionville or Bear Mountain Park.
The claims about when he started in Bear Mountain vary depending on the source. There are various claims that he started his hike in Apr, May or June 2017. One story is that he lived in the park for a couple weeks before deciding to start hiking South on the AT. Another version of the story is that he started out only doing a 2 week hike on the AT that goes through the park and decided to keep going sometime after that hike. It's unclear to me if maybe he hiked for a couple weeks wearing jeans and then went home and got more appropriate clothing and equipment between that hike and starting his long hike on the AT. If he started in Apr then there was a very big gap in time before he got to Unionville and Duncannon in June or July. It makes more sense if he started at Bear Mountain in late May or early June.
This may be a case of hikers not recalling correctly what he told them. Or it could indicate that he told a different start date and slightly different story of where he started to different people. I think we need to try to find evidence of him at Bear Mountain. If he was really camping or hiking around there for 2 weeks in Apr May or June 2017 then someone should have noticed. But we do not have ANY hikers (AFAIK) who claimed to have met him in Bear Mountain Park. MOO.