Hikers

For the second time in little more than two years, state police are investigating murder on the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania, this time involving two hikers near Duncannon, Perry County. Police said other hikers discovered the two bodies about 6 p.m. Thursday inside a lean-to 200 yards off the trail about four miles southwest of Duncannon. Authorities identified the victims as Geoffrey L. Hood, 26, of Signal Mountain, Tenn., and Molly Larue, 26, of Shaker Heights, Ohio.

The hikers are free. Finally. After more than two years in captivity, Americans Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, an Elkins Park native, have been released from Iran's notorious Evin prison. Let their journey back to the United States and their long-suffering families be a safe one, and their homecoming joyous. The two men, and a third American, Sarah Shourd, were arrested on July 31, 2009, during a vacation along a poorly marked area on the border between Iraqi Kurdistan and Iran.

State police in Gettysburg said yesterday they had no new leads but were continuing their investigation into the fatal shooting of a hiker and the wounding of another near the Appalachian Trail in Adams County on Friday. Spokesman Phil Carey said troopers were continuing to look for clues in the Michaux State Forest, where Rebecca Wight, 29, of Blacksburg, Va., was killed and Claudia Brenner, 31, of Ithaca, N.Y., was wounded. The two women had been hiking along the Appalachian Trail and the Rocky Knob Trail.

WASHINGTON - Looking better fed and rested than on the day they were freed two weeks ago, American hikers Josh Fattal, of Elkins Park, and Shane Bauer, of Minnesota, came to Capitol Hill today for the first leg of a national thank-you tour. In a private meeting with Senators Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and Al Franken (D-Minn.), the hikers, both 29, expressed their gratitude to the lawmakers for their support during the 26 months that they were imprisoned in Iran on charges of espionage.

In Washington state last month, a hiker lost the trail, then lost his camp, then wandered around the Olympic Mountains for five days. After searchers had given up hope of finding him alive, he showed up at a ranger station, tired and hungry. The sound of bagpipes, he said, had led him there. Meanwhile, just to the south on Mount Rainier, two climbers from that renowned alpine training ground, Washington, D.C., became trapped in a storm on a steep, icy route called Liberty Ridge.

The search for a Delaware County man who disappeared last November on a remote mountaintop in central Oregon has ended. "Closure helps," Daniel R. Curran Jr. said yesterday after law enforcement officials in Bend, Ore., told him that hikers had found his son's body Friday. "We were all pretty much resigned to the fact that we lost him. The question was if he was going to be found. " Daniel R. Curran 3d, of Springfield, would have been 25 on March 19. The Deschutes County Sheriff's Office began an autopsy on Monday and yesterday confirmed Curran's identity with dental records, Detective Don Pray said in an interview.

After helping to build and rehabilitate homes in Kentucky during spring break, 37 La Salle University students began a traditional hike up Pine Mountain to a place called High Rock about 1 p.m. Thursday. What should have been a fun excursion turned into a frightening ordeal when they got lost as darkness fell. The students and three university staffers endured subfreezing temperatures until they were rescued by authorities early Friday. The hikers were taken to a local hospital to be treated for hypothermia and dehydration, and one was kept for observation, said La Salle spokesman Jon Caroulis.

Fourteen-year-old Elise Coughlin never really shared her mother's enthusiasm for backpacking, but she said she thought she had been taking the weekend trip to the Catskills pretty well - up to a point. "I was upset . . . when I woke up Sunday and there was snow on my head," she said. There was snow, all right - 20 inches of it. A ranger said it was the worst early storm in about 100 years at 4,025-foot Hunter Mountain in the southern Catskills. The mountain is near Tannersville, N.Y., west of Interstate 87. Yesterday Elise; her mother, Sharon, and Sharon Coughlin's fiance, Joseph Graham, were back in their Runnemede home, contemplating a weekend that started as a simple trip to see the fall colors and resulted in six hikers being stranded on the mountain.

A 38-year-old man, reportedly wearing the boots and backpack of one of his alleged victims, has been charged with the slayings of two young hikers on the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania, state police and relatives said yesterday. David "Casey" Horn, no address given, was arrested without incident while hiking near Harpers Ferry, W. Va., about 8 p.m. Friday, said West Virginia State Trooper S.C. Tucker. Magistrate Patricia Noland of Jefferson County, W. Va., said Horn had been charged in Pennsylvania with homicide in the Sept.

When Robert J. Twitchell took his wife and their four young children to their vacation home in New Hampshire in the 1960s, he didn't forget Sunday worship. He just did it himself, clergy-free. "We would go outside and with his prayer book he would conduct a service there, just the six of us," daughter Becky Roller recalled in an interview. He considered it "direct communication" with the Almighty, Roller said, "because we were outside in all that beauty. " On Thursday, May 2, Mr. Twitchell, 90, of Haddonfield, retired owner of a recycling equipment sales firm in Cherry Hill, died at Cooper University Hospital in Camden.

After helping to build and rehabilitate homes in Kentucky during spring break, 37 La Salle University students began a traditional hike up Pine Mountain to a place called High Rock about 1 p.m. Thursday. What should have been a fun excursion turned into a frightening ordeal when they got lost as darkness fell. The students and three university staffers endured subfreezing temperatures until they were rescued by authorities early Friday. The hikers were taken to a local hospital to be treated for hypothermia and dehydration, and one was kept for observation, said La Salle spokesman Jon Caroulis.

After helping to build and rehab homes in Kentucky during spring break, 37 La Salle University students began a traditional hike up Pine Mountain to a place called High Rock about 1 p.m. Thursday. What should have been a fun excursion turned into a frightening ordeal when they got lost as darkness fell. The students and three university staffers endured subfreezing temperatures until they were rescued by authorities early Friday morning. The hikers were taken to a local hospital to be treated for hypothermia and dehydration, and one was kept for observation, said La Salle spokesman Jon Caroulis.

Ian Sarmento thought he was ready to walk the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail from the Mexican border to Canada. After all, hadn't he already hiked the 2,184 miles of the Appalachian Trail? The Chester County 21-year-old had made that trek as a teenager, without compass, GPS, or locator beacon, which beams a hiker's location to a satellite and down to authorities. Not even a cellphone. So in May, he set out to do it again, on the big daddy of Western trails. He wanted to confront nature with a natural tool kit - his wits.

PORTLAND, Ore. - Rescue teams have found three snowshoers who got lost on a weekend camping trip near Mount Hood. The trio was reported in good health, having made it through two nights under the leadership of a mountaineer. The three set out Saturday on snowshoes and called 911 on Sunday to report they were lost. Although the cellphone connection was sketchy, they said they had food and sleeping bags, said Detective Matt English of the Hood River County sheriff's office. There was no contact after that until searchers found them Monday.

It took five months and 2,200 miles, but siblings Kate and Brandon Imp and their sidekick Emily Ginger - a.k.a. the Ringleader, Monkey, and Lightning - hiked the length of the Appalachian Trail in 2010. It's taking a similar sort of determination to make and promote Beauty Beneath the Dirt , Kate's feature film of their adventure. "I've probably put in thousands of hours on this," says Kate, 26, a lawyer in Chicago. "And that's not counting the hike. " The executive producer/director and her brother will be back home in Burlington County this weekend for two screenings, part of a two-month series of 50 buzz-building presentations in theaters and other venues on or near "the AT" between Georgia and Maine.

KEMPTON, Pa. - Exhausted but joyful, a bleary-eyed Elizabeth Christman stood in front of the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary visitor center in Berks County at 1 a.m. Thursday. "We're ecstatic," the 38-year-old Allentown occupational therapist said, speaking for her husband, Scott. "We feel joy and thankfulness. " Her father, Robert Durn, 74, of Allentown, and her two sons, Garrod, 9, and Griffen, 5, had been missing in a remote section of Hawk Mountain for more than eight hours before being found shortly before 12:01 a.m. Thursday.

A hiker whose body was found near Yaki Point in the Grand Canyon National Park was that of 41-year-old Peter Reichner of Glenside, Pa., officials said. The National Park Service said Reichner's body was found Jan. 12, next to the South Kaibab Trail about one-third mile from the trailhead located near Yaki Point on the South Rim. Reichner died of injuries sustained in a fall, the Park Service said, adding the investigation is ongoing. Additional details are not yet available.

This, you know: Cross-country skiers will choose a secluded forest trail over a popular black diamond run every time. But, shhhh, don't tell: Backcountry ski trails don't come much better than those on many national wildlife refuges. That's still largely a secret. Scenic wildlife refuges ideal for winter exploration by ski and snowshoe hide in many Northern states. The terrain and difficulty level vary widely. Some refuges lend ski equipment free or rent it at low cost. Wildlife sightings are a bonus.