Former 2,000-Miler Renn Goes for the High Points

The NCAA's online news source, www.ncaasports.com, has a story posted on 13 July 2007 titled "Feature: On top of the world" written by Amy Farnum Novin. It's about Virginia Wesleyan College’s Joanne Renn who is the college's assistant men’s tennis coach and Senior Women’s Administrator for the Division III athletics program in Norfolk, Va.

In her free time, she's also a hiker and climber, now engaged in getting to the high points of all 50 states. She's currently gotten 44 of the lower 48.

Anyway,

"Renn’s passion for climbing began she was a child when her parents bought a farm in the western part of Virginia in the 1960s. The 10-year-old would hike the Blue Ridge Mountains with her father, and one day stumbled upon the Appalachian Trail. When she found out it spanned 2,000 miles from Georgia to Maine, Renn started thinking about exploring it.

"'I thought about walking the Appalachian Trail as a challenge and actually finished that in 2000,' said Renn. 'I did not do it all at one time because of school – I did it in three six-week sections. As you walk up the trail and go through all of these states, you actually hit six of the state’s high points as you walk. I thought it would be kind of cool to go to every high point of every state and researched it and some trails associated with high points.'"

So she now hikes/climbs "with a friend from St. Louis that she met in Virginia while hiking on the trail 15 years ago."