Life in the North Woods

[jhetley]

A couple of trails are closed up in Baxter State Park, due to an active search. Those trails go to the peak of Mt. Katahdin, and are a bit strenuous. We hiked both, decades back. Looks like someone signed the register book to go up one and down the other. And never signed themselves down and safe.

Thing that adds "fun" to the situation, is that one of the trails is the end of the Appalachian Trail, and there will be through-hikers coming out of a long stretch (100 miles) of wilderness to finish off their marathon.

Comments

[heleninwales]

I hope they find the lost person. We only ever lost one person when were running geology fields trips. While we were searching a bracken clad rocky hillside, they were actually in a cafe down in the town. They'd somehow lost the group and made their way down to sea level on their own. Unfortunately lack of mobile phone signal meant we weren't aware of this fact for quite a while.

[jhetley]

Search team with a dog found one body, other person still missing. We hiked that trail -- it is above timberline, so a lot of low spruce and birch scrub. If someone got off the trail, which is quite rough, you could walk within ten feet of a body and not see it.

https://www.bangordailynews.com/2025/06/04/outdoors/recreation/maine-katahdin-hikes-death-lost-missing-tragedy-hikers-tim-esther-keiderling/

[heleninwales]

That's sad news. Dogs are really useful in difficult terrain when someone could be lying hidden just a few yards aay.

[jhetley]

It was a father/daughter hike, adult daughter is still missing as of noon news. Just speculation here, but I wonder if the father had a fall or medical emergency and the daughter went to get help. Cell phones may not work there, even if they had them.