Disappearance of Gerry Largay

Geraldine "Gerry" Largay was a retired nurse and U.S. Air Force veteran from Brentwood, Tennessee, who was flip-flop thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail. She began hiking northbound from Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, in April 2013 with a trail partner, Jane Lee, who departed the trail in New Hampshire on June 30, 2013, due to a family emergency. Lee later said Largay had a poor sense of direction and expressed concern about her continuing alone, while Largay's family maintained she was an experienced and capable hiker.

Largay was last seen at the Poplar Ridge lean-to on the morning of July 22, 2013. She planned to hike to the Spaulding Mountain lean-to and then on to State Route 27 in Carrabassett Valley, Maine, to meet her husband, George. When she failed to arrive by the afternoon of July 24, 2013, George flagged down a police officer and a search began. Investigators initially focused on the area south of Spaulding Mountain based on reports from other hikers, but this was later determined to be a misidentification of a different hiker; the search was refocused north of Poplar Ridge using cell phone data. Led by the Maine Warden Service and supported by more than 100 volunteers at its peak, the search was one of the largest in state history but found no confirmed trace of Largay. The initial effort was suspended on July 30, 2013, and scaled down further around August 4–6, 2013, though smaller-scale searches and investigation continued.

On October 14, 2015, a forester surveying U.S. Navy property near Mount Redington, used for cold-weather survival training, discovered a campsite roughly 3,000 feet from the Appalachian Trail containing human remains. The remains were confirmed to be Largay's. The Maine Medical Examiner concluded she died from lack of food and water and environmental exposure. A journal recovered at the site showed she survived at least 19 days, with an entry dated August 6, 2013, in which she resigned herself to her fate and asked that her final location and belongings be shared with loved ones. A further entry was dated August 18, 2013, though the search coordinator expressed skepticism about that date's accuracy. Undelivered text messages from her phone indicated she had left the trail to use the bathroom and believed, incorrectly, that she was three or four miles off the trail rather than the actual 3,000 feet. Evidence at the site suggested she had attempted to start fires to signal for help. Canine search teams had come within 100 yards of the site on three occasions during the original search but did not locate it, as it lay in dense woods difficult to see until closely approached.