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Photo by Holly Kays, courtesy of Smokies Life
Word from the Smokies
A hiker tells Supervisory PSAR Ranger Joshua Albritton and PSAR Ranger Cutter Wheeler about a woman further down the trail who may need help.
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Photo by Holly Kays, courtesy of Smokies Life
Word from the Smokies
Supervisory PSAR Ranger Joshua Albritton speaks with a group of hikers descending the trail from Mount Le Conte.
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Photo by Holly Kays, courtesy of Smokies Life
Word from the Smokies
From Alum Cave Bluffs, the summit of Mount Le Conte is a strenuous 2.7 miles. Supervisory PSAR Ranger Joshua Albritton (left) and PSAR Ranger Cutter Wheeler wait along the trail, chatting with hikers to help them make good decisions about whether to attempt this difficult section.
It’s not yet 9 a.m. on a weekday, but Alum Cave Trail is already bustling. With parking scarce, hikers might walk nearly a mile to reach the trailhead along Newfound Gap Road.
“I’ve probably already talked to 20 people,” says Joshua Albritton, supervisory preventative search and rescue ranger for Great Smoky Mountains National Park, joining PSAR Ranger Cutter Wheeler at the trailhead around a quarter after nine.
For Albritton, the conversations had been routine—“Which way to the trailhead?” “How many miles to the top?” “How long will it take to hike?”—but for many of the people asking them, hiking Alum Cave is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Albritton leads a crew of a dozen rangers and a roughly equal number of volunteers who form the park’s Preventative Search and Rescue team, an elite group of first responders that works to address common mistakes or knowledge gaps before they snowball into emergencies—and respond to them if they do.
“The focus is making face-to-face contact with park visitors, sharing very basic information about how to hike safely, and also assisting with trip planning,” Albritton said. “We find a lot of folks that are out on the trail don’t have a destination in mind, or they don’t really know how far that destination may be.”
Formed in 2023 and fully staffed in 2024 using funds from the Park It Forward parking tag program, the PSAR team patrols high-use trails like Alum Cave as well as trailheads and visitor centers. Their 40-pound backpacks are filled with life-saving gear, much of which is funded through support from park partner Friends of the Smokies, positioning them to respond quickly and effectively when emergencies occur. Since 2023, the team has interacted with thousands of visitors and responded to hundreds of incidents.
“This is one of the best services we’re providing through those parking tag funds,” said Katie Liming, the park’s chief of staff. “One of the things we heard people say is they wanted to see a bigger green-and-gray [National Park Service] presence in the field, and the PSAR rangers are providing that.”
Most Smokies visitors make it back to their car on time and uninjured, with mountaintop memories to last a lifetime. But others encounter unexpected obstacles. A weary stumble resulting in a broken ankle, wild weather that leaves them lost or stranded, exhaustion and dehydration when a hike turns out to be unexpectedly challenging.
Search and rescue missions resulting from situations like these are a near daily occurrence in the park, but repetition doesn’t equal routine. Hiker location and medical status, time of day, weather, and terrain combine to determine the blueprint for each rescue—no two SARs are alike.
An immediate threat to life or limb might justify a helicopter rescue, but only if the weather is compatible with safe flight. Can the patient walk? Using a stretcher requires a litter team, and possibly rope rigging if the terrain is technical. In one recent rescue, rangers called in a sawyer team to cut a path from the off-trail location where the patient was found.
Despite being a difficult trail, Alum Cave is popular even with novice hikers for its beauty and variety of destinations: the aptly named Arch Rock at 1.4 miles, the heath bald of Inspiration Point half a mile later, the famed Alum Cave Bluffs at 2.3 miles, and, for the hardiest of hikers, the trail’s terminus at Mount Le Conte, five miles from the trailhead. It sees so many rescue calls that the park had metal anchors installed above Arch Rock, a natural formation that acts as a tunnel, a series of hand-hewn stone steps the only way through. The anchors allow first responders to quickly set up their ropes and safely transport patients under the rock.
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Photo by Holly Kays, courtesy of Smokies Life
Word from the Smokies
Supervisory PSAR Ranger Joshua Albritton takes notes after assisting a hiker at Arch Rock. These notes are used to create statistics to help make the PSAR team even more effective in the years to come.
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Photo by Holly Kays, courtesy of Smokies Life
Word from the Smokies
Supervisory PSAR Ranger Joshua Albritton stops to talk with a hiker still early in her hike up Alum Cave Trail.
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Photo by Holly Kays, courtesy of Smokies Life
Word from the Smokies
Supervisory Preventative Search and Rescue Ranger Joshua Albritton descends the stairs at Alum Cave Bluffs as PSAR Ranger Cutter Wheeler checks in with a group of hikers.
“It’s quite the exercise,” said Wheeler. “And we do it about 30 times a year.”
Even a “simple” SAR might occupy five or six staff members for the better part of a day, and trickier operations can become infinitely more demanding. It’s not unheard of for rescuers to be awake for more than 24 hours as they bring an injured hiker to safety, or for an operation to involve well over 30 people and multiple agencies.
“This is the stuff we love,” Wheeler said. Arch Rock during a nighttime rescue is awe-inspiring, “the entire cave illuminated by headlamps, so it just looks like there’s light streaming out of both sides.” He thrives on the challenge, even when a rescue runs long, and he comes home dirty, exhausted, and sleep deprived.
“I feel like I love it even more then,” he said. “There’s something about pushing yourself all the way. There’s something about knowing your bed’s on the other side.”
However, many people who find themselves in need of rescue could have made it home on their own, if they’d only been a little better prepared. By catching them while they’re still early in the hike, PSAR rangers help people avoid potentially hazardous choices and leave the trail a bit more educated about how to plan a hike.
“A lot of people don’t spend time in the woods, and this may be their first hiking trip,” Wheeler said. “A lot of people are learning the process of hiking and how to prepare for being in the woods, so a lot of what we’re trying to teach is the ten essentials and how to pack correctly and be prepared.” These basics include food, water, and proper clothing.
Patrolling the trail as far as the bluffs, Wheeler and Albritton pause at each landmark and take time to greet every group that walks by. They meet parents with small children, athletic couples making their confident way up the mountain, a church group with about 20 teen boys in tow, an elderly couple struggling against health issues, a group of women in their 40s finishing a girls’ trip to LeConte Lodge. The rangers engage some folks with a simple hello. Other times, they ask a question or two: “Do you need any help?” “Where are you headed today?” “Did everybody pack water?”
“You sort of take inventory,” Albritton said. “If there is a rescue call later in the day, maybe you’ve already seen that person and talked to that person. So you already have this picture in your mind.”
The park’s rugged terrain and nearly non-existent cell coverage mean that any mistake can be costly—and that any information available before the SAR team deploys is worth its weight in gold.
In the years to come, Albritton hopes to see his team contribute even more data to the cause. Since PSAR’s launch, he’s been working to standardize the statistics rangers collect on patrol, hoping to reveal where hikers most frequently need assistance and whether interventions such as new signage or targeted trail maintenance could help. While it’s too early to know if PSAR efforts are reducing SAR calls, anecdotes abound.
“A lot of times too we’re talking to people who may hike in the future,” Albritton said. “Are we helping them in ten years when we have been continuously creating support for them, and now they’re prepared for the next hike? We don’t know if we’re helping limit rescues in a decade, but I think about that a lot.”
At the top of the bluff, Wheeler has his eye on the church group. Separated parties are a frequent cause of SAR calls, and with large groups the probability increases. A cloud of dust and cry of pain redirects his focus, and the rangers descend to find a preteen boy crying and covered in dust. After offering a hand and a few kind words, they determine that he’s not hurt—just scared—and resume their post watching the church group leaders count heads. The boys divide into two packs: one heading back to the trailhead and the other to Mount Le Conte. The Le Conte-bound hikers don’t have a map, so Albritton hands them one, offers a word of caution about the terrain ahead, and wishes them well.
“One of the best things about this park is we have so many people who are so caring,” Wheeler said. “They want to go help.”
About the author: Holly Kays is the lead writer for the 29,000-member Smokies Life, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting the scientific, historical, and interpretive activities of Great Smoky Mountains National Park by providing educational products and services such as this column. Learn more at smokieslife.org or reach the author at hollyk@smokieslife.org.