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Backpacker Joe
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Backpacker Joe
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PostFri May 27, 2016 8:47 pm 
A heart wrenching story to be sure. God bless her and her family. When I leave camp/trail for such things I always turn around and look at the surrounding terrain so that Ill recognize it on the return trip. Little things like that can help.

"If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide." — Abraham Lincoln
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hikersarenumber1
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hikersarenumber1
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PostFri May 27, 2016 9:37 pm 
why is everyone assuming she went off trail to pee? If she needed to dig a cat hole she could have had to travel further to find a suitable place...

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Malachai Constant
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Malachai Constant
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PostFri May 27, 2016 9:49 pm 
People here underestimate the eastern woods. They are more difficult to navigate than the Pacific Northwest due to their sameness and regularity. No definite landmarks and an infinity of small gullies and rises. no good bearing spots, and few viewpoints. It all looks like out takes from "The Blair Witch Project" when mixed up their my only bearings were some geocaches I had downloaded. Lots of ponds and trees that all look alike.

"You do not laugh when you look at the mountains, or when you look at the sea." Lafcadio Hearn
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treeswarper
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treeswarper
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PostSat May 28, 2016 6:46 am 
Malachai Constant wrote:
People here underestimate the eastern woods. They are more difficult to navigate than the Pacific Northwest due to their sameness and regularity. No definite landmarks and an infinity of small gullies and rises. no good bearing spots, and few viewpoints. It all looks like out takes from "The Blair Witch Project" when mixed up their my only bearings were some geocaches I had downloaded. Lots of ponds and trees that all look alike.
This is true. Where it is flat and forested, it can be difficult to travel without a compass or gps. I learned to pay attention to the sun if I didn't use my compass. And yes, the sun moves so that needs to be taken into account. Or rolly and forested.

What's especially fun about sock puppets is that you can make each one unique and individual, so that they each have special characters. And they don't have to be human––animals and aliens are great possibilities
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Bedivere
Why Do Witches Burn?



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Bedivere
Why Do Witches Burn?
PostSat May 28, 2016 11:05 am 
Malachai Constant wrote:
People here underestimate the eastern woods. They are more difficult to navigate than the Pacific Northwest due to their sameness and regularity.
I have always prided myself on never being lost in the mountains and have traveled extensively off-trail without a compass. But, that's here in WA where you're always in a valley or on a ridge and navigating by terrain is easy. I can't imagine how I'd fare in an area of flat-ish, very regular terrain with no distinguishing landmarks. Probably not very well...

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Hikerdood
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Hikerdood
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PostSat May 28, 2016 11:11 am 
100 yards off trail to take a leak? I assume she could not find a good spot and kept walking and got completely turned around. Sad read. RIP

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querulous
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querulous
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PostSat May 28, 2016 12:46 pm 
Malachai Constant wrote:
People here underestimate the eastern woods. They are more difficult to navigate than the Pacific Northwest due to their sameness and regularity. No definite landmarks and an infinity of small gullies and rises. no good bearing spots, and few viewpoints. It all looks like out takes from "The Blair Witch Project" when mixed up their my only bearings were some geocaches I had downloaded. Lots of ponds and trees that all look alike.
Your general point is well-taken, the N Cascades and Olympics in general offer lots of terrain clues, and the easiest country to get lost in is relatively flat, featureless wooded terrain which abounds in Maine, or did until the whole northern part of the state was turned into the equivalent of the Snoqualmie Tree farm. But this is not a flat part of the maine AT like the "hundred mile wilderness" section, it follow a ridgeline. Just going uphill or following a really crude compass bearing would have gotten her back to the trail, which is after all a linear feature. It's just plain unfortunate; the only way I can make sense of it is, she was nearly 70, and she had just a couple of days of food. She probably lost the energy to move quickly. You or I could probably keep moving after a couple of weeks with no food, but maybe not when we are older. It's worth noting, too, that high-elevation forest in those parts can be extremely brushy and arduous travel. Thickets of balsam, white spruce, much of it dead and brushy. Not as hard as N Cascades brush at its finest, but plenty hard.

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contour5
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PostSat May 28, 2016 2:12 pm 
There's an interesting government facility adjacent to the search area... What role did a covert Navy “torture school” play in the disappearance of Geraldine Largay?
Quote:
The first public indication that the Navy was operating a secret base in Maine’s western mountain wilderness came during the summer of 1972 when a 19-year-old Navy frogman stumbled out of the woods into a hippie commune and blurted out a tale of physical harassment and torture he said he had taken at the hands of military instructors at Redington

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Bernardo
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Bernardo
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PostSun May 29, 2016 12:41 pm 
contour5 wrote:
There's an interesting government facility adjacent to the search area... What role did a covert Navy “torture school” play in the disappearance of Geraldine Largay?
I can answer that question: none! Also, it's not a torture school. It's a survival school. One of the special survival skills they teach is how to survive as a prisoner in rough conditions. I know because I've been to one of those schools. Not a cakewalk, but very valuable training. With regard to this lost hiker, it's very unusual and tragic. Society only has so much resources and sadly those resources were mostly exhausted while she was still alive and could have been found. Finally, I don't find east coast forests harder to navigate. The hard wood forests tend to be more open and easier to walk though. That part of Maine may be different, but the topo maps where this incident took place indicate all sorts of usable terrain features which leads me to speculate there was a situation here either physical or mental that led to disaster.

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Joseph
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Joseph
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PostSat Sep 18, 2021 11:30 am 
Noticed this sad story and lots of speculation here on how she could have gotten lost and not found by SAR: From an article: https://www.pressherald.com/2016/09/17/at-instructor-ill-fated-hiker-disregarded-common-sense/ Lee disclosed that on several occasions during their hike of the trail, Largay would become disoriented and begin hiking in the wrong direction. Lee said Largay would become “flustered and combative when she made these kind of mistakes.” Lee was her hiking partner, until she left the trail, leaving Largay to hike alone. Not sure, but its also possible she was in early stages of some kind of dementia, which can manifest itself in strange ways. Obvious speculation, but a possibility.

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