2,000 Feet Away - A Mystery

The Appalachian Trail is the Moby Dick of many a hiker. Especially those who choose to do it as a thru-hike. Completing the entire 2,190 miles in one go is a daunting undertaking. Each year, thousands attempt the trail. About one in four succeeds, usually over 5 to 7 months.

In 2013, Gerry Largay set out with a friend to tackle it. Her husband, George, shadowed them from a distance in a car. They would meet up when the trail crossed intersections every 2-3 days to replenish supplies. Her friend had to drop out due to a family issue, so the 66-year-old grandmother, with the trail name “Inchworm”, continued on her own.

It is a too familiar tale in hiking. Nature calls. Hiking etiquette requires you to move off trail to do your business. That is what Largay did in late July and lost her direction. The result is predictable but unbelievably tragic given where she was found. According to fellow hikers she had bumped into, Largay was increasingly disoriented. Many expressed concerns but she soldiered on as a former Air Force nurse would.

However, she was on two powerful anti-anxiety medications (once lost, she would have gone through withdrawal contributing to poor decisions). She failed to meet up with her husband and a search was called. Largay had hiked nearly 1,000 miles by that time.

When lost, experienced hikers follow a brook or stream until it leads to a river or a road. Chris Busby, a very experienced hiker states, “An older, less physically fit hiker like Gerry would presumably prefer paths on level ground. Hikers who are injured or otherwise unfit to bushwhack are advised to stay put, take shelter, build a signal fire, blow their emergency whistle, and take other steps to signal rescuers.”

In his 2019 book, When You Find My Body: The Disappearance of Geraldine Largay on the Appalachian Trail, author D. Dauphinee, is credited with an additional factor that added to Largay’s woes. She did not think like hiker, instead she relied on her cellphone. This was constantly charged during meetups with her husband where she also received her medications.

Once lost, she does what cellphone users do. Seek better reception. To her, and many, that means climbing higher. A stream of unsent texts and written notes documented her last weeks. Busby writes, “Had wardens made it a priority to search all the high ground in the area where she disappeared, it seems certain they soon would have found her. A call placed to her phone the afternoon she got lost was not received, but it produced a ping that, using cell-tower data, indicated her general location. Her body was found about a mile from that ping’s coordinates.”

The cellphone was a critical tool rather than a nice-to-have and it failed. Hardened outdoorists state the number one tool they want is a knife.

There are many reasons for her situation. Reliance on the cellphone, age, inexperience, medication, and comfort of meeting up with her husband. She died over a period of weeks, found camped atop a hill

roughly 2,000 feet from the trail. If she wandered another direction for a short period, she may have met up with a logging road. 

Incredibly and ironically, she went missing along the trail that borders a base run by the U.S. Navy. Called a SERE School (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape), the program teaches military personnel how to survive in the wild, evade capture, resist torture while in enemy hands, and “escape” confinement.

In the fall of 2015, Largay’s body was discovered by a land surveyor inside the borders of the SERE facility. Her camp is also telling. There was no evidence she’d made a rational attempt to build a signal fire. Instead, she tried to burn whole trees and wrote texts and notes. Her food running out in days.

Those last weeks would have been tortuous and terrifying. What is shocking is, 98% of people lost in the Maine woods are found within 24 hours of being reported missing. Largay was so close. Yet, a lack of skills and experience and, some say, a flawed search, meant she could have been much farther away.