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StrangeOutdoors 10/2/18 StrangeOutdoors 10/2/18

The disappearance and death of Susan Clements at Clingmans Dome in the Smokies

Mitzie Sue “Susan” Clements, disappeared September 25, 2018. Body found October 2, 2018, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina/Tennessee

Revised July 2024

Mitzie Sue “Susan” Clements, 53, was hiking with her 20-year-old daughter on Tuesday, September 25, 2018, near Clingmans Dome in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Susan, a mother of three, disappeared around 5 p.m. in an area close to the parking lot, about a quarter-mile from Andrews Bald on the Forney Ridge Trail. She had agreed to meet her youngest daughter at the parking lot but never arrived.

A massive search over the following week yielded no results until Susan’s remains were discovered on October 2, 2018, in dense vegetation about two miles west of the Clingmans Dome parking area, down the steep Huggins Creek Drainage. Authorities attributed her death to the weather and disorientation, which caused her to lose her way, take a wrong trail intersection and die from hypothermia, according to the autopsy. But is this explanation as straightforward as it seems?

There have been other unexplained disappearances and deaths in the Clingmans Dome area. On October 8, 1976, 16-year-old Trenny Lynn Gibson went on a field trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park with 35-40 of her classmates from Bearden High School in Knoxville, Tennessee. The students hiked around 1.8 miles to Andrews Bald from Clingmans Dome and then back on the Forney Ridge Trail. Trenny vanished and was never seen again. Read the The mysterious disappearance of Trenny Lynn Gibson from Clingmans Dome in the Smokies.

What is and where is the Great Smoky Mountains National Park?

Great Smoky Mountains National Park is in the southeastern United States, with parts in Tennessee and North Carolina. It straddles the ridgeline of the Great Smoky Mountains, which are part of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The Park covers an area of 522,419 acres and is the most popular national park in the United States, with 12.5 million visitors in 2019. The busiest month of the year is usually October, when people come to see the amazing fall colors.

The park contains some of the highest mountains in eastern North America, including Clingmans Dome, Mount Guyot, and Mount Le Conte. The Appalachian Trail also passes through it.

The National Park Service receives about 100 calls for search and rescue each year. The majority of these calls are for medical assistance for a hiker whose location is known, and about a dozen involve an actual search, most lasting less than a day.

The Clements vacation in the Smoky Mountains

Susan, 53, lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, and she was on vacation in North Carolina with her youngest daughter. She worked for the Cincinnati Department of Sewers.

She was considered an experienced on-trail hiker, and they had spent a couple of days hiking in the Smokies, including on trails longer and more strenuous than Forney Ridge, including the Chimney Tops Trail, which has an elevation change of 1,300 feet over 2 miles.

Susan had light brown hair and blue eyes, 5'6" tall and 125 pounds, and was wearing a green zip-up sweater, black workout pants over black leggings, a clear rain poncho, and gray Nike running shoes with light green soles.

The hike on the Forney Ridge Trail

On Tuesday, September 25, 2018, the two women arrived at the trailhead of the 4.5-mile Forney Ridge Trail and started the short hike in the middle of the afternoon. The two were returning from Andrews Bald with an elevation change of about 400 feet from the parking lot to where it descends to the bald at 5,860 feet elevation. They were intended to do a day hike only, so they were not carrying supplies such as food, water, or heavyweight clothing, and Susan did not have her phone with her either.

About a tenth of a mile from the parking lot, Forney Ridge Trail connects to the Clingmans Dome Bypass Trail, which then intersects with the Appalachian Trail.

Susan’s daughter wanted to climb up to the Clingmans Dome Observation Tower (6,643 feet in elevation), and because she was hiking faster, she told her mother she would go ahead and then meet her back at the parking lot.

They weren’t apart for long, but when Susan’s daughter arrived back at the parking lot at around 5 pm, she couldn’t find her Mom. She waited a short while, walked around, retraced some of her steps, and then contacted the park authorities some hours later.

Mitzie Sue "Susan" Clements and her daughter — Mitzie Sue "Susan" Clements, left, and her daughter

The search for Susan Clements

One hundred twenty-five trained searchers with drones, sniffer dogs and helicopters from 30 search and rescue agencies helped park staff in a large-scale search of the area around Clingmans Dome.

Jared St. Clair, the GSMNP chief ranger during the search, said, "It had gotten dark, and the mountain was in the clouds already that night. Any time you have reduced visibility on a search, it is going to complicate things/ With it getting dark and rainy, there were also fewer hikers on trails. That is usually a very busy area. The few hikers we could find had not seen her."

A massive grid search ensued, but the weather only worsened. For the next few days, Clingmans Dome remained covered by dense clouds, with three inches of rain on the mountain. High temperatures were in the 50s, with lows in the 40s. Aerial assistance was not possible for a few days.

Verizon set up a portable cell tower in the area, as the area has poor cellphone service. Officials said the cell booster " provides the critical cell and data coverage needed to effectively manage and support the search effort in this remote location.”

forney ridge trailhead Great smoky mountains — The path between the Clingmans Dome parking area and the Forney Ridge Trail to Andrews Bald.

The search for Susan Clements lasted a week and involved 175 trained personnel from five states and some 50 organizations, helicopters, drones and K-9 units.

By October 1st, 2018, searchers had hiked more than 500 miles on trails and conducted intensive off-trail “grid searches” of approximately 10 square miles in the steep, rugged terrain straddling the North Carolina-Tennessee border. Given the resources deployed in the area where Susan disappeared, the searchers were left frustrated by the lack of evidence.

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.

Other organizations aiding in the search included 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 and the Henderson County Rescue Squad.

After a few days of searching, crews located part of the poncho Clements was wearing in an area south of the Appalachian Trail. Searchers went farther down the heavily wooded Huggins Creek drainage and found more clothing that Susan had clearly removed.

search for susan clements morning briefing

Remains found

On the afternoon of October 2, 2018, search crews finally found Susan Clement’s body approximately two miles west of the Clingmans Dome parking area and three-quarters of a mile south of the Appalachian Trail.

Susan was in incredibly thick vegetation down the steep Huggins Creek Drainage in Swain County, lying on her back in the cold water of Huggins Creek. The area was so inaccessible that the body needed to be removed by a helicopter.

A map showing the general area where the body of Susan Clements was found in Oct. 2018 in the Great Smoky Mountains relative to the planned hike between Andrews Bald and Clingmans Dome.

Autopsy

Susan Clements’ autopsy was released in April 2019. The Swain County, N.C. medical examiner wrote the cause of death was "complications of hypothermia" due to "exposure to adverse environmental conditions." The report said she demonstrated "paradoxical undressing suggestive of and consistent with a hypothermic event."

The report says the death was an accident and lists dehydration as a contributing factor. Clements had no other signs of significant trauma, and there were no signs of foul play.

What happened to Susan Clements?

Susan’s death was the eleventh in the National Park in 2018, up from the seven deaths in 2017, but not as many as the 16 deaths in 2016. The most common cause of death in the Smokies tends to be from motor vehicle accidents, which is the most popular activity in the park.

Of the eleven deaths in 2018, five deaths were from motor vehicle accidents, one from a motorcycle accident, one in which a woman fell off her bicycle and hit her head, one suicide, a man who was found in September near Cades Cove with evidence of being scavenged by wildlife, and partial human remains found.

The weather on top of the 6,643-foot-high Clingmans Dome can change very quickly, with high winds and temperatures dropping well below the lower-lying areas of the park. The temperature at the Dome is usually 20 degrees cooler than in the lower-lying cities of Asheville and Gatlinburg, Tennessee, at the park headquarters.

Forney Ridge and AT clingmans dome Susan Clements — Green highlights the path hiker Susan Clements intended to take to the Clingmans Dome parking area. Red highlights the route she continued on the Appalachian Trail after missing the turn to the parking lot.

Authorities quickly dismissed foul play, and in the rain and mist, maybe Susan just missed the fork in the trail after leaving her daughter's company on the Forney Ridge Trail. Susan’s remains were found in incredibly thick vegetation down the steep Huggins Creek Drainage in Swain County.

Park’s spokesperson, Julena Campbell, said many people were asking how it was possible to get lost in such a busy place as Clingmans Dome. She said it is actually common for people to get lost or turned around on top of Clingmans Dome, where there are many trail intersections. “Most of us picture the park via trail, but most of us do not get off-trail and realize what the landscape really is like. If you haven’t been off-trail and disoriented and lost in that thick vegetation and steep, rocky hillside, it’s hard to imagine what that must be like. It would have been fairly easy, particularly given the conditions she was hiking in, it was very foggy, raining and probably dark or getting dark, that someone could miss an intersection or the parking lot and get off on the wrong trail.”

She also said a commonality in typical “lost person behavior” is that often people who are lost or disoriented will head downhill or toward water, saying, “Once we cleared all the trails (using a grid search), then we moved to off-trail, focusing on downhills, particularly downhill drainages. That’s where she was found. It’s incredibly thick and very rocky. Trying to find someone or any clues in that kind of landscape is very difficult.

What do you do if you get lost or disoriented, or hurt yourself? Campbell said, “The best thing is to stay put and stay on a trail. When we start a search in the park, the first place we will go is the last seen point. If you stay put, you increase the likelihood of someone finding you more quickly.”

Perhaps Susan did exhibit typical “lost person behavior” and headed downhill into the Huggins Creek Drainage. There are many possible reasons someone could miss the turn to Clingmans Dome.

The medical examiner's report stated her clothing was "not sufficient for the adverse weather." It also said Clements "was not carrying a pack with food, water, or means of shelter or other layers of clothing."

Dr. Russ Langdon is an anesthesiologist and head of the Neurocritical Care unit at UT Medical Center and an expert in wilderness medicine, having studied the field of medical care outside urban environments since the early 1970s.

Dr. Russ Langdon at UT Medical Center — Dr. Russ Langdon at UT Medical Cente

Langdon said, "The Smoky Mountains are a very dangerous area, any month of the yea. You have a combination of wind, which is significant, and rain, and the cold weather. This allows the body to lose a tremendous amount of heat. A lot of times we don't think about hypothermia because we live in the warm South, but it is easily possible in the Smokies. Especially when you're at higher elevations like Clingmans Dome. The problem is you go outside, it's 50 degrees, and you think you are going to be okay because you're only going out for the day. You usually don't have any extra clothes with you for a worst-case situation.”

Langdon also said it is very common for people suffering from hypothermia to feel overheated and remove their clothes. "We estimate between 20 to 50 percent of all cases of accidental hypothermia, which this is, we notice the victims actually have no clothes on.”

Langdon shared one theory for what happens in the body that frequently causes people to paradoxically remove clothing when they're dying due to the cold. "When you're really cold, your body shivers to generate heat. It also shunts warm blood away from your skin and concentrates it at your core. But you're using a lot of energy when you shiver. Your body can only sustain it for so long. When shivering stops, all that warm blood in your core rushes to the rest of your body. Your skin, which had no blood, suddenly has a tremendous amount of blood. You start tingling and you get a hot flash. The first thing you do in that situation, when your mind is not working anyway, is go, 'It is warm. I'm going to take all my clothes off.' Death happens very soon after that. That is when most deaths in hypothermia occur, when that blood goes from the warm core into the very cold outside skin. Once you start shivering, your body may not be able to last an hour. It can happen very quickly. If you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, an hour of intense shivering may be enough that your body starts to shut down," .

In a since-removed public post on YouTube, the oldest daughter of Susan Clements stated her mother had been on a diet and was eating less than normal.

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