Up on Cove Mountain: Earl Swift’s Haunting Return to the Appalachian Trail and the Ghost of a 1990 Tragedy.

In the summer of 1990, the Appalachian Trail was a different world—a more isolated, analog, and perhaps more innocent corridor of wilderness stretching from Maine to Georgia. Among the thousands of "thru-hikers" seeking a transcendent connection with nature that year was Earl Swift, a young and ambitious Virginia journalist. As he trekked southward from the granite monolith of Mount Katahdin, Swift found himself following the digital-free "footprints" of a young couple: Molly LaRue and Geoff Hood. Through the registers and logbooks tucked away in trailside shelters, Swift began to form a mental image of the pair long before he ever met them in the flesh. They were smart, diligent, and deeply in love with the woods—the kind of hikers who embodied the very best of the trail’s community.

When Swift finally caught up with them in the rugged White Mountains of New Hampshire, his intuition was confirmed. Molly and Geoff were friendly, capable, and meticulously careful. They weren’t racing for records; they were absorbing the landscape, studying flora, and fostering a "trail family" of fellow southbounders. Swift hiked alongside them for three days and two nights, a brief window of camaraderie that would eventually become the most haunting chapter of his life. Weeks after their paths diverged, the unthinkable happened: Molly and Geoff were brutally murdered at a campsite outside Duncannon, Pennsylvania. The killer, a drifter named Paul David Crews, committed an act of senseless violence that sent shockwaves through the outdoor community and left a permanent scar on the trail’s reputation as a sanctuary.

Decades later, the memories of that summer refused to fade. Swift, now a celebrated author and investigative journalist known for his meticulous research and narrative depth, remained plagued by the "why" of the tragedy. In late 2023, thirty-three years after his first end-to-end hike, Swift embarked on a second thru-hike of the 2,190-mile trail. This was not merely a physical challenge or a nostalgia trip; it was a quest for meaning. His journey resulted in the upcoming book Up on Cove Mountain: Adventure, Tragedy, and a Quest for Meaning on the Appalachian Trail, scheduled for release by Mariner Books on August 18, 2026. The book braids together his 1990 experiences with his modern-day trek, offering a profound meditation on fate, luck, and the thin line between survival and catastrophe.

The 1990 segment of Swift’s narrative begins with a harrowing brush with death that underscores the capricious nature of the backcountry. While descending the sheer, two-thousand-foot Webster Cliffs into Crawford Notch, New Hampshire, Swift and his hiking partner, Greg "Animal" Hammer, were pushed to their physical limits. Exhausted and ignoring camping regulations, they set up an illegal camp in a glade near US Route 302. In the middle of the night, a thunderous "boom" shattered the silence—a sound so concussive it felt like an explosion. A massive, rotted tree had toppled, missing Swift’s head and Hammer’s legs by mere inches.

The near-miss was a chilling reminder of the "blind, stupid luck" that governs life in the wild. Had the tree rotated a fraction more or less, one or both of them would have been killed. In a surreal moment of aftermath, a red fox appeared in the camp, making eye contact with the shaken hikers before vanishing into the night. This event left Swift deeply unnerved, contemplating how easily a life could be extinguished by a random act of nature. It served as a grim foreshadowing of the human-perpetrated tragedy that would soon claim Molly and Geoff.

Desperate to distance themselves from the site of their near-death experience, Swift and Hammer pushed themselves through the southern Whites, climbing 4,600 feet in a single day to reach Mount Garfield. Their motivation was partially driven by the hope of reuniting with Molly and Geoff. By reading the shelter registers, they knew the couple was traveling with a group they called their "Southbound family," including two young women named Elizabeth and Chris. Unlike Swift, who was focused on miles, Molly and Geoff moved slowly, baking bread, photographing salamanders, and fully immersing themselves in the sylvan loveliness of the woods.

When Swift finally reconnected with them at the Jeffers Brook Shelter at the base of Mount Moosilauke, he was struck by their warmth. Molly was blond, fit, and quick to laugh; Geoff was thin, bearded, and possessed a calm, contemplative Tennessee drawl. They were, in Swift’s words, "Appalachian clogger types"—authentic and kind. However, that night at the shelter also introduced them to the darker side of human interaction on the trail. A man named Rubin, carrying an absurdly oversized pack and dressed in a formal black suit and wide-brimmed hat, arrived and immediately began antagonizing the group.

Rubin was the antithesis of the "trail magic" ethos. He was brusque, demanding, and seemingly unstable. After chugging a six-pack of beer, he spent the night chanting and dancing in a trance-like state, preventing the exhausted hikers from sleeping. When confronted, he brushed them off with a chilling indifference. The next morning, he revealed a paranoid backstory involving a "Mafia" contract and a forced divorce. While Swift was eager to flee Rubin’s presence, Molly and Geoff treated the man with quiet tolerance—a testament to their gentle nature, but perhaps also a sign of the vulnerability that can come with such openness.

The group’s final morning together was spent at the Mount Cube Sugar House, a maple syrup farm and restaurant owned by former New Hampshire Governor Meldrim Thomson Jr. There, they indulged in a "hiker’s five-dollar special"—a feast of pancakes and sausage. They laughed about a USA Today article that exaggerated their daily mileage and took group photos on the lawn. It was a scene of pure, unadulterated joy. When Molly and Geoff waved from the back of a pickup truck as they hitched a ride back to the trailhead, Swift had no way of knowing it was the last time he would see them alive.

The tragedy of Molly LaRue and Geoff Hood remains one of the most significant criminal cases in the history of the Appalachian Trail. Statistically, the trail is incredibly safe. With millions of visitors annually, the murder rate is lower than that of almost any American city. However, when violence does occur in such a sacred space, it resonates with a unique intensity. Experts in wilderness psychology often point to the "illusion of safety" that the backcountry provides. Hikers often let their guard down, trusting the "community of the trail" in ways they never would in an urban environment. Paul David Crews, the man who would eventually murder Molly and Geoff, was a fugitive fleeing a murder charge in Florida. He was a "predator in paradise," exploiting the very openness that made the trail so special to people like Molly and Geoff.

In his 2023 return to the trail, Swift found a landscape that had changed both physically and culturally. He was no longer the thirty-one-year-old who could sprint over Franconia Ridge; he was a man in his sixties, accompanied for a time by a young German section hiker named Timothy Goodman. The trail was more crowded, the gear was lighter, and the "shelter registers" had largely been replaced by digital apps like FarOut. Yet, the ghost of the 1990 tragedy loomed large. When Swift returned to the site of the Mount Cube Sugar House in 2024, he found it shuttered and decaying. The vibrant restaurant of his youth was now a "forlorn relic," overgrown with weeds and stripped of its signage.

This contrast between the "then" and "now" is the emotional core of Up on Cove Mountain. Swift’s journey is an attempt to reconcile the beauty of the Appalachian Trail with the capacity for human evil that occasionally intrudes upon it. He grapples with the "survivor’s guilt" of having missed the tragedy by mere weeks and the realization that his own life was spared by a falling tree, while Molly and Geoff’s lives were taken by a man they likely would have greeted with a smile.

Through expert perspectives and historical analysis, Swift’s narrative also explores the evolution of trail safety. In the wake of the 1990 murders, the Appalachian Trail Conference (now the Appalachian Trail Conservancy) increased its coordination with law enforcement and improved communication systems. Today, while the trail remains a place of profound peace, there is a greater awareness of the need for "situational awareness."

Up on Cove Mountain is more than a true-crime story or a hiking memoir; it is a profound exploration of the human condition. It asks whether we can ever truly find meaning in tragedy, or if we must simply learn to live with the questions that remain. As Swift hikes south toward Hanover, he carries with him the memories of a blond, dimpled woman with a blue-haired troll doll on her pack and a thin, bearded man with a smoky Tennessee drawl—two people who did everything right, but whose journey ended in a place where the trail’s sylvan loveliness couldn’t protect them. In rewriting their story, Swift ensures that while their hike was cut short, their spirits remain a permanent part of the Appalachian Trail’s long and winding history.