Red-Haired Ash Reads

While I live in the Appalachian mountains and spend a lot of time wandering the woods, I have never considered spending months hiking the Appalachian Trail or the Pacific Crest Trail. I have always been conscious of the dangers of hiking/wandering the woods and usually am pretty prepared, but that is only for a few hours, never days or months. So reading this book was very eye opening and honestly, made me realize I could never hike one of these trails. 

This book covers Andrea Lankford’s journey of trying to locate three missing young men who vanished from the Pacific Crest Trail. This follows her journey connecting with the family, multiple searches for all three hikers, trying unconventional methods like mediums, and overcoming her own injuries and mental health during the process. 

This was a fascinating and heartbreaking journey for the search of Chris Sylvia, Kris Fowler, and David O’Sullivan. I learned so much about long term hiking, the PCT, and how hard it can be for search and rescue teams to find anything. Lankford did a fantastic job at balancing her personal experience and opinions, with science, statistics, and facts of the three cases. If you are interested in true crime and missing persons cases, I highly recommend this book. 

TW: death; suicide; missing people; grief; cancer;

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