Mitzie Sue “Susan” Clements, disappeared September 25, 2018, Body found October 2, 2018, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina/Tennessee
Revised April 2021
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 pm in an area close to the parking lot, about 1/4 mile from Andrews Bald, on the Forney Ridge Trail. She had agreed to meet with her youngest daughter at the parking lot but didn’t show up.
A huge search over the next week failed to turn up any trace, until Susan’s remains were found in thick vegetation on October 2, 2018, approximately two miles west of the Clingmans Dome parking area, down the steep Huggins Creek Drainage. The death was blamed on the weather and disorientation causing her to lose her way and take the wrong trail intersection. But was it really as straightforward an explanation as the authorities suggested? Certainly an unsettling death in the Smokies.
Susan Clements’ disappearance is in the same area as that of Trenny Lynn Gibson who also vanished from the Forney Ridge Trail in 1976 and was never seen again. She was believed to have been abducted.
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, straddling the ridgeline of the Great Smoky Mountains, 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. Usually, the busiest month of the year is 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 gets about 100 calls for search and rescue each year. The majority of these calls were made 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 from 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" 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, Susan and her daughter 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 were not carrying supplies or heavyweight clothing.
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 very 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.
There have been other unexplained disappearances and deaths from the Clingmans Dome area. On October 8th, 1976, 16 years old, Trenny Lynn Gibson went with 35-40 of her classmates from Bearden High School in Knoxville, Tennessee, on a field trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The students were hiking 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.
The search for Susan Clements
125 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.
The weather was poor with rain, fog, wind, and low temperatures in the 40s which hampered search efforts due to limited visibility.
Verizon set up a portable cell tower, as the area has poor cellphone service. Officials said the cell booster is “providing the critical cell and data coverage needed to effectively manage and support the search effort in this remote location.”
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 and rugged terrain that straddles the North Carolina-Tennessee border. The searchers were left frustrated by the lack of evidence given the resources deployed in the area where Susan disappeared.
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.
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. The area was so inaccessible, that the body needed to be extracted by helicopter.
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 park headquarters.
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 head 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? The best thing is to stay put and stay on a trail. When we start a search in the park, the very first place we will go is the point last seen. If you stay put, you increase the likelihood that someone will find you more quickly.”
Authorities quickly dismissed foul play and in the rain and mist maybe Susan just missed the fork in the trail after leaving the company of her daughter on the Forney Ridge Trail.
Susan’s remains were found in incredibly thick vegetation, down the steep Huggins Creek Drainage in Swain County.
Perhaps Susan did exhibit typical “lost person behavior” and head downhill into the Huggins Creek Drainage. But her death in such a popular Park, surrounded by other visitors on a well-trafficked trail, seems either very bad luck or there is more to the story than the authorities have released. An intriguing and strange story from the Smokies.
Become a member of StrangeOutdoors for exclusive content
Exclusive articles for members of StrangeOutdoors that are not available elsewhere on the site.
See the latest Exclusive members-only articles on StrangeOutdoors.com
READ MORE STRANGE STORIES FROM THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK
The disturbing disappearance of Trenny Lynn Gibson from Clingmans Dome
Sources
https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article219306345.html
https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/cleves/search-intensifies-for-cleves-woman-missing-in-great-smoky-mountains-national-park
https://eu.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2018/10/01/great-smoky-mountains-searchers-missing-hiker-clingmans-dome-smokies/1486631002/
https://heavy.com/news/2018/09/mitzie-sue-susan-clements-missing/
https://eu.cincinnati.com/story/news/2018/10/02/body-cleves-hiker-mitzi-susan-clements-found/1505507002/
https://eu.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2019/04/03/great-smoky-mountains-missing-hiker-cause-death-revealed-autopsy/3350917002/
https://eu.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2018/10/04/great-smoky-mountains-deaths-hiking-national-park/1522628002/
