Frances “Franny” Stone, a 72-year-old from Pennsylvania, summited Mount Marcy on Sunday, Aug. 31 after a summer of long walks and bleacher climbing. (Provided photo — Meghan Stone)

KEENE — Frances “Franny” Stone trained for this past weekend’s hike in the High Peaks Wilderness with her daughter, Meghan, all summer in their hometown of Meadville, Pennsylvania. There’s not much by way of hiking hills in the area, so they would get up at 5 a.m. to go up and down the bleachers at the fairgrounds, or to walk for an hour or two up and down a hill in a nearby neighborhood.

On Sunday, Aug. 31, just weeks after her 72nd birthday, that training paid off as Stone reached the summit of Mount Marcy, the highest peak in New York state at 5,334 feet in elevation.

Marcy’s summit is nearly 15 miles round-trip and an elevation gain of 3,166 feet, and this was Stone’s first time in the Adirondacks.

“It feels wonderful, it really does. It feels like, ‘Oh my gosh, did we really do that?'” she said the next day, as the family was driving back to Pennsylvania. “It’s kind of incredulous, but it’s certainly a high point of my life that I can look back and say that was a great time.”

Stone reached the summit alongside her daughter, Meghan’s husband John Vogan and their friend Eric Bennett. She was grateful for the support and encouragement her daughter, who held her hand — sometimes literally — through the grueling 12-hour hike. It also happened to be Meghan’s birthday.

From left, Eric Bennett, Frances Stone, Meghan Stone and John Vogan pose for a photo at the Mount Marcy summit on Sunday, Aug. 31. (Provided photo — Meghan Stone)

While Stone has never attempted a hike like this, it was not her first physical challenge. She ran her first marathon at age 60, after having tackled shorter distances along with her daughter. Last May, they signed up for a 5-mile run that they treated more like a hike. That’s when Meghan asked her if she’d like to hike Mount Marcy with her.

Her first instinct was to say no.

“I started thinking about it and said to myself, ‘Wouldn’t that be fun, though? To do something so out of my comfort zone with a bunch of people that I really care about,'” she said. “And so I’m glad I decided to do it.”

Stone has realized that training in this way is really helpful. She has been diagnosed with osteopenia, a precursor to osteoporosis, where the bones are less dense than normal. After training this summer, she said her aches and pains have gone away.

There’s also the mental benefit. She works as a pastoral counselor, and often recommends exercise to her patients to counter symptoms of anxiety and depression. This recommendation is often met with excuses, but she realized that the effects of exercise can compound.

Frances “Franny” Stone, a 72-year-old from Pennsylvania, summited Mount Marcy on Sunday, Aug. 31 after a summer of long walks and bleacher climbing. (Provided photo — Meghan Stone)

“It’s amazing about your energy level that the more you exercise, it feels like the more energy you have,” she said.

A key part of training and completing challenges from marathons to Mount Marcy, Stone said, is mental preparation. During the trek up Marcy, she said she had to stay focused on this.

“Your muscles are aching, and you know, you’ve got to watch your self-talk,” she said. “I can get negative when you’re so tired.”

The mantra she used for this summer was, “I can do hard things.”

“That’s just a lifelong learning thing that I think is is good for us as we age,” she said. “Not to limit ourselves by thinking someone my age shouldn’t be doing something like that.”

Frances "Franny" Stone became an endurance athlete later in life, running her first marathon at age 60 and hiking Mount Marcy this weekend at age 72. In her younger years, she was a beauty queen and was crowned Miss Crawford County in 1973. (Provided photo)

Stone graduated high school in 1971, in an era with no girls sports. She thinks there might have been an intramural basketball team, and maybe a bowling team, but for the most part sports weren’t on the radar for girls her age. In college, she was on the cheerleading team, which was the closest she could get to athletic competition.

When Meghan was in school, Stone realized the benefit that competing in sports could bring. Meghan was a talented hockey player, playing in high school and college. Even then, around the turn of the millennium, Meghan was only one of a few girls playing hockey, and she ended up going to a boarding school because they had a girl’s hockey team.

“I thought, ‘Oh, I would have loved to have done that when I was that age, and to be able to compete and be on a sports team,” Stone said. “I think it does so much for a person to be able to be on a team and to try your best and work hard.”

For Stone, her daughter is both a training buddy and an inspiration. Asked what challenge they’ll be tackling next, Stone laughed and joked that the day before, when she was coming down the mountain, she was thinking, “never again.”

“But who knows what may happen?” she said. “My daughter is such an inspiration to me, and so I’m sure if she says, ‘Mom, would you like to …’ I would be like, ‘Oh, OK, that sounds like fun.'”