Teen's 11 days alone and lost in Smokies detailed by park officials

Knoxville

Steve Kloster, chief ranger at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, shows a map outlining their search routes for Austin Bohanan.

On his 11th day of being lost in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and being "this close" to eating bugs, 18-year-old Austin Bohanan woke up Tuesday morning on the top of a ridge, looked down, and saw boats floating on Abrams Creek, Chief Ranger Steve Kloster said.

At a news conference at park headquarters on Wednesday afternoon, Kloster relayed the Blount County teen's initial story of how he emerged uninjured despite entering the park with only light food and water.

Austin and his stepfather, identified as Hubert Dyer Jr., somehow became separated in the Shop Creek area of the park on the afternoon of Aug. 11, Austin told park rangers. "We don't have any reason to believe that he was with anybody else," Kloster said.

It wasn't until the night of Aug. 13 that Austin was reported missing. Kloster didn't say Wednesday who reported the teen missing, and said Dyer didn't immediately report him missing because the family initially believed they could find him.

Ginseng hunting

The pair were in the park hunting for ginseng, Kloster said Dyer told authorities. Ginseng is a popular medicinal herb used in energy drinks and for various other purposes. It is illegal to remove plants from national parks.

"Later on we’ll look at the law enforcement component," the chief ranger said, "but we’re not there right now."

After being separated, Austin climbed to the top of a ridge and tried multiple times to call his mother, but the calls did not go through, Kloster said. The teen spent the night atop that ridge.

In the morning, Austin climbed down, found a creek believed to be Tabcat Creek and followed it until he encountered Panther Creek.

The teen hiked up Panther Creek for "two or three days" until he realized he needed to travel in the other direction and turned around, Kloster said, adding that the area, marked by "steep gorges" and "several waterfalls," is "very difficult" to traverse.

Austin told rangers that at one point, he heard a search helicopter and tried to get the attention of the pilot, but the vegetation was too dense and limited visibility, Kloster said. Helicopters equipped with infrared devices were used to aid in the search, as were canine teams from the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency.

Austin "drank the water but that was it," Kloster said, indicating the teen ate almost nothing while inside the park.

On Tuesday morning, Austin awoke on a ridge where Panther and Abrams creeks meet. He "scrambled down to the bottom of Abrams Creek and he was finally able to wave down a boat," which picked him up and ultimately gave him a ride back to his family, Kloster said.

Austin was assessed at the Blount County Memorial Hospital and released a few hours later.

"I serve an almighty God! Praise be given unto him!" Brooke Bohanan wrote on Facebook on Tuesday afternoon, roughly eight hours after she posted a prayer saying, "Please LORD bring our boy back to us some way or another."

'Confident he could still be alive'

More than 100 people were involved in the search for Austin, who Kloster described as a "moving target." Although they found no clues to Austin's whereabouts, Kloster said search teams persevered, working long hours in 90-degree weather.

"Why I thought he was alive: He was young, he was in shape, there was all kinds of water out there, the weather wasn’t 10 degrees below zero," the chief ranger said. "And so if he was in those areas, I felt confident he could still be alive.

Steve Kloster, chief ranger for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, answer questions during a news conference on the park services search for Austin Bohanan and how he was able survive while lost for 11 days in the Smokies.

Kloster, who's worked at the park since 1988, said he couldn't "right off the top of my head remember (a search) that went longer than this one did."

The chief ranger thanked the Bohanan family, who he said "supported our decisions" and were along Highway 129 "every day during this search."

"The Bohanan family was always there to serve food, to serve cold drinks, and it was a huge morale boost to our searches. So I want to thank them for that."

Reporter Travis Dorman covers crime and breaking news for the Knoxville News Sentinel. He can be reached at 865-342-6315 or at travis.dorman@knoxnews.com. Follow him on Twitter @travdorman.