CALL OF THE WILD

When calamity strikes in America's busiest national park, who comes to the rescue?

- BY PAIGE WILLIAMS

In the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, there are more than a hundred backcountry emergencies a year. An auxiliary "all hazards" team of élite outdoorsmen helps park rangers pull off the most difficult extractions.

America's busiest national park isn't Yosemite or Yellowstone; it's the Great Smoky Mountains, which straddles the heavily forested border of North Carolina and Tennessee. Half the country can drive there in a day. The park measures 522,427 acres, nearly the size of Rhode Island. The terrain is choked with rhododendron and dog hobble, ground cover that makes it easy to get lost and hard to be found. There are eight hundred and forty-eight miles of trail, and countless manways, which masquerade as trails. The many waterfalls are fed by rain on par with that of the Pacific Northwest. The rivers rise and boil with astonishing speed. There's little to no cell service.