Appalachian Trail hiker Geraldine Largay survived for nearly a month after getting lost along the trail in Franklin County in July 2013, and documented her final days in a journal that was among the personal effects found by the Maine Warden Service when it recovered her remains more than two years later. Excerpts from warden service report 
 
 “When you find my body, please call my husband George and my daughter Kerry,” Largay wrote in a journal entry dated Aug. 6. “It will be the greatest kindness for them to know that I am dead and where you found me – no matter how many years from now. Please find it in your heart to mail the contents of this bag to one of them.” 
 
 Problems began for Largay, a 66-year-old hiker from Brentwood, Tennessee, when she got lost after leaving the trail for a bathroom break while heading north en route to the Spaulding lean-to on July 22, 2013. Advertisement 
 
 In a text sent at 11:01 a.m. on July 22, 2013, Largay said, “In somm trouble. Got off trail to go to br. The file also says wardens found evidence that Largay attempted to text her husband after becoming lost, but the crucial texts were not delivered because of poor cell reception. Can u call AMC to c if a trail maintainer can help me. Somewhere north of woods road. The wardens concluded that Largay made her way to higher ground in an attempt to get better cell coverage. Off trail 3 or 4 miles. Call police for what to do pls. Xox.” 
 
 She tried sending it again 20 minutes later. The last entry in her journal is dated Aug. 18, meaning she apparently survived at least 26 days after she disappeared. John MacDonald, spokesman for the warden service, said Wednesday that the agency is drafting a statement regarding the release of the file that will be issued at a later date. A SINGLE CLUE TO GO ON 
 
 Largay, a through-hiker nicknamed “Inchworm,” started on the 2,184-mile Appalachian Trail in West Virginia in April with a friend, Jane Lee. Largay’s husband of 42 years, George Largay, told police that the trail, which starts at Springer Mountain in Georgia and ends at Mount Katahdin in Maine, was on his wife’s “bucket list” and that he had supported the women along the way, meeting them at different locations and taking them to motels to sleep, do their laundry and shower. Lee had to leave the trail because of a family emergency, and Largay decided to continue on alone. Her husband reported her missing on July 24, 2013, after she failed to show up at a prearranged meeting point on state Route 27 in Wyman Township. She died from a lack of food and environmental exposure.​ 
 
 Largay’s family requested privacy Wednesday while they took the time to read the file in depth. Lee, who didn’t respond to an email seeking comment Wednesday, told the wardens that she was certain Largay’s husband wasn’t aware of her struggles, and he too told them that “Gerry was probably in over her head.” 
 
 On Oct. 18, 2015, Adam and other game wardens met with Largay’s husband and other family members to show them where Largay was found, arriving at the site after hiking through thick softwood trees along the Appalachian Trail, into more open terrain with hardwoods, past old logging roads, down and up steep ridges and over brooks.
– A lost hiker in Maine starved to death after waiting for rescue and then accepting her fate, heartbreaking journal entries have revealed. Geraldine Largay, a 66-year-old from Tennessee, disappeared while hiking the Appalachian Trail in Maine on July 22, 2013, and the newly disclosed journal shows that she survived for at least 26 days, the Portland Press Herald reports. "When you find my body, please call my husband George and my daughter Kerry," she wrote in an Aug. 6 journal entry. "It will be the greatest kindness for them to know that I am dead and where you found me—no matter how many years from now." The final entry was dated Aug. 18. Her skeletal remains were discovered in a tent 3,000 feet from the trail more than two years later. Largay, who was trying to complete a "bucket list" hike from West Virginia to the trail's end solo after a friend left for a family emergency, was reported missing by her husband after she failed to make it to a rendezvous point. A huge search and rescue effort followed, but it was suspended after a week. According to a 1,579-page Maine Warden Service report, Largay became lost after leaving the trail to go to the bathroom, the Boston Globe reports. She tried to text her husband at least a dozen times, but she was unable to get a signal even after moving to higher ground. She then set up a campsite on a knoll, where authorities found a handmade flag and evidence she had tried to start a signal fire. On Oct. 18, 2015, a week after a forester found her body, her husband of 42 years and other family members joined wardens in a hike to the site, where they left a cross and family mementos. (Two "lost" hikers in North Carolina were found in a town 30 miles away.)