The Maine Warden Service said it is making progress connecting with Appalachian Trail hikers who may have information about Geraldine Largay, and is no longer looking for the unidentified hiker who called the Stratton Mountain Motel July 24, saying she’d seen the missing hiker.
Cpl. John MacDonald said in an email today that wardens are no longer seeking the woman who called the Stratton Motel at 5 p.m. July 24, saying she and Inchworm, Largay’s trail name, had both spent Tuesday night in the Spaulding Mountain lean-to.
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“That information is no longer needed,” MacDonald said, but he wouldn’t elaborate.
In a press release earlier today, MacDonald said the Warden Service has made “considerable progress” on connecting with hikers who may have seen or talked to Largay.
The hikers with information were found as far north along the Appalachian Trail as the 100-Mile Wilderness — the last section of the trail before Baxter State Park — and the park itself, where the 2,200-mile trail ends at the summit of Mount Katahdin.
The Warden Service in an update Thursday said it was using cellphone data as part of the search but had taken “all leads to this point as far as we can go.”
The search area has been narrowed to a section of rough terrain and sudden drop-offs, and the wardens are now seeking only searchers who are affiliated with the Maine Association of Search and Rescue. The organization is a non-profit group that provides training and certification for search and rescue volunteers using nationally recognized standards.
An intensified search is expected to continue this weekend for Largay, 66, of Brentwood, Tenn., who started her hike in April, 950 trail miles south in West Virginia.
Largay was last heard from on July 21, when she sent a text to her husband that she was planning to meet him in Wyman Township.
A press conference is scheduled Sunday at the Sugarloaf Mountain Hotel to update the media about the search.
Wardens ask anyone with information about Largay to call the Public Safety Dispatch Center in Augusta at 800-452-4664.
Kaitlin Schroeder — 861-9252
kschroeder@mainetoday.com
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