One week after a hiker went missing in Great Smoky Mountains, searchers have no clues

Editor's note: The body of Mitzie Sue “Susan” Clements was found Oct. 2. Here is a more recent story.

One week after a woman went missing in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park while hiking with her daughter, national park officials said they still have no clues as to her whereabouts.

Mitzie Sue “Susan” Clements, 53, of Cleves, Ohio, has been missing since Sept. 25. She was on a hike with her 20-year-old daughter near Clingmans Dome, one of the most popular spots in the park. She was last seen on the Forney Ridge Trail, approximately a quarter-mile from Andrews Bald at 5 p.m. that day, said Julena Campbell, Smokies spokeswoman.

Clements is a white female with light brown hair and blue eyes, is 5 feet 6 inches tall, and weighs 125 pounds. She is wearing a green zip-up sweater, black workout pants over black leggings, a clear rain poncho and white tennis shoes with purple laces.

Clements works for the Cincinnati Department of Sewers, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.

She and her daughter were on their way back from Andrews Bald, a 1.8-mile hike each way. Campbell said her daughter wanted to climb up to the Clingmans Dome Observation Tower, and because she was hiking faster, she told her mother she would go ahead and then meet her back at the parking lot.

"When she arrived at the parking lot, her mother wasn't there," Campbell said. "She waited a little bit, walked around, retraced some of her steps and then called the park."

More than 100 people from 40 agencies join search

Over the weekend, the search effort intensified with 125 trained searchers and logistical support personnel from more than 40 state and local agencies, led by the National Park Service, Campbell said.

Searchers have worked through rain, fog, wind and low temperatures in the 40s over the last several days in this high-elevation, mountainous region.

She said the temperature on top of Clingmans Dome, which sits at 6,643 feet in elevation and is the highest point in the park, is usually 20 degrees cooler than in the lower-lying cities of Asheville and Gatlinburg, Tennessee, at park headquarters.

As of Monday, Campbell said, searchers have hiked more than 500 miles on trails looking for Clements. In addition, experienced search personnel, canine teams, and drones with specialized search-and-rescue equipment have been used to conduct more intensive off-trail “grid-searches” of approximately 10 square miles in the steep, rugged terrain that straddles the North Carolina-Tennessee border.

On Thursday night, the park closed the 7-mile Clingmans Dome Road to allow for a landing pad for aircraft assisting in the search, and to transform the Clingmans Dome parking area into a field incident command post for the large-scale operation.

No trails are closed.

Verizon Wireless established a mobile cell booster to provide the critical cell and data coverage needed in this remote location.

Over the weekend, the NC State Bureau of Investigation joined in the search along with Christian Aid Ministries Search and Rescue, Gatlinburg Fire Department, Haywood County Search and Rescue, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee Highway Patrol Rapid Response Team, Tennessee Search and Rescue Team, Tennessee State Parks, U.S. Forest Service Cherokee Hotshots, as well as other National Park Service personnel from the Blue Ridge Parkway, Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, and Shenandoah National Park.

The park is not seeking additional volunteer searchers at this time.

“This is unforgiving terrain, and we are working long hours to find Ms. Clements,” Acting Chief Ranger Jared St. Clair said in a statement. “We are extremely grateful for the rapid response by so many well-trained personnel and the generous support resources that our cooperators have dedicated to this search.”

Other organizations aiding in the search include: Backcountry Unit Search and Rescue, Black Diamond Search and Rescue, Blount County Rescue Squad, Blount County Special Operations Response Team, Blue and Gray Search and Rescue Dogs, Buncombe County Rescue Squad, Catons Chapel-Richardson Cove Volunteer Fire Department, Cherokee Indian Police Department, Cherokee Tribal EMS, Gatlinburg Police Department, Henderson County Rescue Squad and EMS, Jackson County Sheriff’s Office,  Knox County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, Knoxville-Knox County Emergency Management Agency, Maryville Police Department, North Carolina Emergency Management Agency, Northview Kodak Fire Department, Pigeon Forge Police Department, Sevier County Emergency Management Agency, Sevier County Volunteer Rescue Squad, Sevier County Sheriff’s Office, Sevierville Police Department, Southwest Virginia Mountain Rescue Group, Seymour Volunteer Fire Department, Smoky Mountain Nordic Ski Patrol, Smoky Mountain Search and Rescue Team, Swain County Emergency Management Agency, Swain County Rescue Squad, Swain County Sheriff’s Office, Tennessee Emergency Management Agency and Walden’s Creek Volunteer Fire Department.

How common are search and rescues in the Smokies?

The Smokies, which cover a half-million acres, is the most visited national park in the country, with some 11.3 million visitors last year. Usually the busiest month of the year is October, when people come to see the brilliant fall color.

The park gets about 100 calls for search and rescue each year, Campbell said. The majority of those calls are for medical assistance for a hiker whose location is known, she said, while about a dozen involve an actual search.

Of those, only a handful take more than a day, she said, some with happy endings, some not.

Earlier in September, William Lee Hill, Jr., 30, of Louisville, Tennessee, was found dead off Rich Mountain Road, about 2 miles north of Cades Cove, in the far western area of the park in Tennessee.

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Hill and a friend had gone into the park to search for ginseng roots Sept. 7. Removing plants from any national park is illegal. He was reported missing Sept. 9 and was found Sept. 11.

Hill's body showed signs of being scavenged by wildlife over a period of several days, park officials said. They said they saw an adult black bear in the area that was aggressive to them.

The bear was later killed, and park officials have been awaiting necropsy results on the bear, as well as autopsy results on Hill to determine how he died.

In a happier turn of events, last summer, a teenager emerged safely from the woods after being missing in the Smokies for 11 days. Austin Bohanan, of Blount County, Tennessee, walked out of the Smokies on Aug. 21, 2017, on his own.

Bohanan was reported missing about 8 p.m. Aug. 13 after he was last seen hiking off-trail on the evening of Aug. 11.

The teen and his stepfather, Hubert Dyer Jr., somehow became separated in the Shop Creek area of the park. According to Smokies Chief Ranger Steve Kloster, the two were in the park searching for ginseng.

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Multiple agencies, including the park's search and rescue unit, the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency and the Backcountry Unit Search and Rescue team, and canine teams from the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency, searched the area for eight days in 90-degree weather.

Bohanan said he tried calling his mother from his cellphone but the calls wouldn’t go through. At one point he tried to wave down a search helicopter but the vegetation was too thick for him to be seen. He survived mostly on water, and by following creeks. He was finally able to wave down a boat on Abrams Creek, which picked him up and gave him a ride back to his family, Kloster said.

Have information?

Anyone who saw Clements on Tuesday afternoon or since then is asked to contact the National Park Service Investigative Services Branch: phone 888-653-0009, visit www.nps.gov/isb and click “submit a tip,” email nps_isb@nps.gov, or via a message on Facebook at InvestigativeServicesNPS, or Twitter @SpecialAgentNPS.