Woman falls 60ft off Champlain Mountain in Maine (UPDATE)

ACADIA NATIONAL PARK, Maine --- Members of the University of Maine community were in mourning on Monday following a student's tragic death over the weekend.

Shirley Ladd of Barnstead, New Hampshire died from injures she received after falling at Acadia National Park. Ladd was hiking the Precipice trail on Champlain Mountain at the park with a friend. She was somewhere near the top of the trail when she fell about 60 feet.

Park rangers responded to the scene and called in about 30 people to help, including members of the Bar Harbor Fire Department as well as Mount Desert Island Search and Rescue. Ladd was taken by Life Flight to Eastern Maine Medical Center where she died Saturday evening.

She is remembered as a hard working senior at U. Maine. The 22-year-old worked for campus recreation for a number of years. Her directors say she always did her job with passion. "She had a wide effect on all of us...so it {the tragedy} came as a real shock," said Jeff Hunt, who is the university's director of campus recreation, "and we're all very sad about his and trying to support each other and trying to work through it."

Park rangers at Acadia are still trying to figure out what caused Ladd to fall. Anybody who was on the Precipice Trail last Saturday and might have witnessed the fall is asked to contact park headquarters at (207)-288-8791.

Previous story:


Rangers say a New Hampshire woman fell 60 feet while hiking a difficult trail in Acadia National Park and later died of her injuries.

Ranger Ed Pontbriand tells WCSH-TV ( http://on.wcsh6.com/QpipnM) that the 22-year-old woman fell Saturday while climbing a precipice trail up Champlain Mountain. The ranger tells the station that the trail requires hikers to climb up ladder-like iron rungs.

After she fell, her fellow hikers called 911 and a nearby nurse began treating her. Emergency personnel lifted the woman up a 250-foot rock wall and carried her a mile across the top of the mountain. She was flown to a hospital, where she died of her injuries.

Pontbriand tells the station that the rescue took 5 ½ hours and included 31 people. Park officials haven’t released the woman’s name. –– Information from: WCSH-TV, http://www.wcsh6.com