PORTLAND, Maine – A 67-year-old hiker whose trail name was “Buffalo Bobby” suffered a fatal medical problem Thursday along the Appalachian Trail just 20 miles before he would have finished the 2,180-mile trail for the third time.
Robert Yerike, a free-spirited retired truck driver from Brick, N.J., had called his son, also named Robert, the day before. He was feeling good, eating a hamburger, had gone for a swim and wanted to make sure someone turned the water on in his house. He’d be home Sunday.
The Maine Warden Service told Yerike’s grown children that he apparently had a stroke along the trail Thursday, the children told The Associated Press.
Another hiker, who found him unresponsive and vomiting, walked two miles to get cell phone service to summon help. Yerike (pronounced YEHR’-ik) then had to be carried two miles out of a rugged area known as the “100-Mile Wilderness” because bad weather made
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