She stayed put, which was the right choice.

Several hours later, Largay stopped somewhere along the trail to go to the bathroom.

Then she got lost.

When she couldn’t find her way back to the trail, marked with blue and white blazes, Gerry tried to send a text message to her husband.

“In somm trouble. Got off trail to go to br. Now lost,” she typed into her blue Samsung sliding phone at 11:01 a.m. “Can u call [the Appalachian Mountain Club] to c if a trail maintainer can help me. Somewhere north of woods road. XOX.”

But there was no cellphone service in the remote stretch of forest and the message would not send.

Instead of continuing to search for the trail, she wandered west in an attempt to find higher ground and cell tower coverage, according to the Warden Service report.

She eventually found higher ground, but not phone reception. It’s unclear where she spent her first night in the wild, but by her second day off the trail, she had reached the copse of hemlocks atop the ridge where she would die.


At 4:18 p.m. that day, around the time when she was supposed to meet her husband on Route 27, she tried to send another text.

“Lost since yesterday,” she typed. “Off trail 3 or 4 miles. Call police for what to do pls. XOX.”

Again, the message never sent.

Ms. Largay sought high ground, possibly hoping for a cell signal. She tried over and over to send messages, but none went through.

On July 23, she set up camp, laying her tent atop sticks and pine needles, under a canopy of hemlocks that probably obscured her from airborne rescuers. She tied a shiny silver blanket between two trees, possibly to attract attention, and nearby trees had burn marks.

“It looks like some sort of fire was attempted on those trees by Gerry,” wrote Lt. Kevin Adam, of the Warden Service, in a report.