After 10 days Great Smoky Mountains rangers scale back search for missing Florida man

Karen Chávez, Asheville Citizen Times
·2 min read
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Ten days after a search began for a missing Florida man in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, officials say they are scaling back what had grown into a massive operation.

"Rangers and search teams will begin to reduce the scale of the search for Gordon Kaye," read a May 3 news statement from the National Park Service.

Kaye, 69, of Tampa, Florida, was reported missing on April 26. He was last seen on April 23 near a backcountry campsite in the Deep Creek area of the national park near Bryson City.

Previous coverage: Great Smoky Mountains search for missing man intensifies near Deep Creek

The search will continue with fewer people assigned to the team. To date, 288 people from 51 agencies and four states have helped with the search, according to the news release. This week, approximately 10 searchers per day will continue efforts by foot, on horseback, and with dog teams.

"The search area is steep, slippery, and covered in dense vegetation. NPS rangers are also using an unmanned aircraft system (also called UAS, or drone) to search in areas where vegetation cover allows."

Great Smoky Mountains National Park rangers are searching for Gordon Kaye, 69, in the Deep Creek section of the park.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park rangers are searching for Gordon Kaye, 69, in the Deep Creek section of the park.

Kaye is described as a white male with brown hair and blue eyes. He is 5 feet, 10 inches tall and weighs about 200 pounds.

Park rangers are asking anyone who may have seen or talked to Gordon Kaye to call the park dispatch center at 865-436-1230 or Swain County Dispatch at 828-488-2196.

The Smokies, which sprawls across a half-million acres of rugged, forested terrain in Western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, is the most-visited national park, with some 12.9 million visitors in 2022.

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Park spokesperson Emily Davis said there are about 100 search and rescue operations in the park each year, one of the highest numbers across all national parks.

"All searches are different because of terrain, weather, temperatures, and amount of gear and food the person has with them," Davis told the Citizen Times.

She said there have been at least four significant searches in the park since 2017, all of which lasted more than five days, including the search for Austin Bohanan, an 18-year-old from Blount County, Tennessee, who had been hiking with his father off-trail when the two became separated, the Citizen Times previously reported.

Bohanan was missing for 11 days. But on Aug. 21, 2017, he emerged hungry, but safely, from the woods in the Shope Creek area of the park. 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.

Karen Chávez is Interim Executive Editor for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA TODAY Network. Tips? Call 828-712-6316, email, KChavez@CitizenTimes.com or follow on Twitter @KarenChavezACT. Please help support this type of journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Great Smoky Mountains National Park missing man search scaled back