The Maine Warden Service said it is making progress reaching Appalachian Trail hikers who may have information about Geraldine Largay and is no longer looking for the unidentified person who called the Stratton Mountain Motel on July 24 saying she’d seen the missing hiker.

Cpl. John MacDonald said in an email Friday that wardens are no longer seeking the woman who called the motel to say she and ‘Inchworm,’ Largay’s trail name, had both spent Tuesday night in the Spaulding Mountain lean-to.

In a news release earlier Friday, MacDonald said the warden service has made “considerable progress” 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 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 nonprofit 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.

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 news 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 can be contacted at 861-9252 or at: kschroeder@mainetoday.com