ADVERTISEMENT
To understand the reality of missing persons in our national parks, one must first look at the sheer scale of human interaction with these environments. The National Park Service (NPS) manages over 400 sites and welcomes more than 300 million people annually. With such staggering visitation numbers, it is a statistical certainty that incidents involving lost or overdue hikers will occur. However, data from the NPS reveals a reassuring truth: the vast majority of these cases are resolved within the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Most “missing” hikers are simply individuals who took a wrong turn at a fork in the trail or miscalculated the time needed to return before sunset.
