Warden service believes remains of missing hiker Geraldine Largay found

UPDATED: 1:26 P.M.: AUGUSTA — The Maine Warden Service says the remains found Wednesday are likely those of Geraldine Largay.

The remains were found by contractor doing an environmental survey on U.S. Navy property. Contractor reported finding to the Navy.

Scene — 3,000 feet off the Applalachian Trail — consisted of skeletal remains, clothing and equipment.

There is no foul play believed. That is pending results from the medical examiner.

The wardens believe she left the trail but don’t know why. They will examine the belongings they found to glean clues.

Lt. Kevin Adam says search parties got within 100 yards of the found remains.

This story will be updated.

The discovery of skeletal remains Wednesday in Redington Township may be of missing Tennessee hiker Geraldine Largay.

Largay had been hiking the Appalachian Trail since April when she went missing July 23, 2013, near Redington Township.

According to a statement released Friday by spokesman John MacDonald, “positive identification will be determined in the coming weeks by the Medical Examiner’s Office, however, due to the location of the remains and evidence gathered at the scene, the Maine Warden Service feels confident that Largay has now been located.”

MacDonald also said investigators with the Navy’s NCIS team would be attending a 1 p.m. press conference in Augusta, where officials are expected to release more details on the discovery of Largay’s remains.

The U.S. Navy operates a secretive Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape or S.E.R.E. training facility for military personnel in Redington Township and the AT passes near the facility’s borders. Instructors from the survival school also assisted wardens and volunteers in the initial searches for Largay.

Largay, 66, of Brentwood, Tenn., was an experienced hiker and backpacker who was attempting to hike the Appalachian Trail from West Virginia to Mount Katahdin in northern Maine. She left Harper’s Ferry, W. Va., on April 23, 2013.

On the morning of Sunday, July 21, 2013, Largay left her husband at the Route 4 AT crossing in Sandy River Plantation near the town of Rangeley.

Later that day, she texted her husband to say she was on top of Saddleback Mountain.

Investigators confirmed from hiker interviews that Largay stayed the night at the Poplar Ridge lean-to on the night of Sunday, July 21.

On the morning of Monday, July 22, section hiker Dottie Rust took the last known photograph of a smiling Largay, who was wearing a light-red pullover and tan shorts, according to a Winter 2013 article by Bill O’Brien, editor-in-chief of The Long Distance Hiker, a newsletter of the Appalachian Long Distance Hikers Association.

That morning, Largay texted her husband and indicated she was again headed north on the AT. Her next stop would have been the Spaulding Mountain lean-to, 8 miles away. Geraldine’s plan was to meet her husband on Tuesday, July 23.

Largay, who used the trail name “Inchworm,” never made it.

The Maine Warden Service conducted an extensive search for more than 10 days by more than 100 wardens and volunteers, along with search dogs, horses, an airplane and a helicopter.

An initial, 81-square-mile search area was narrowed to about 4.2 square miles in remote, steep and often thickly wooded terrain.

The stretch of the Appalachian Trail that Largay vanished in is part of a 32-mile section between Routes 4 and 27 that is described as “the most difficult along the AT in Maine” by the Maine Appalachian Trail Club’s Appalachian Trail Guide to Maine.

Poplar Ridge lean-to is at 3,120 feet of elevation and the AT descends steeply most of the way for about 3 miles to Orbeton Stream, which it crosses in a deep canyon at about 1,700 feet of elevation.

At the top of Redington Pond Falls, the trail crosses a gravel road that used to be the railroad bed of the Sandy River and Rangeley Lakes narrow gauge railroad. The AT continues up 3,280-foot Lone Mountain, 1.1 miles from which is a side trail to the 4,043-foot summit of Mount Abraham.

This story will be updated.