Wyoming’s National Parks Sadly In A Unique Top 10
The National Park Service in the US is massive, there are over 400 National Parks sites with more than 84 million acres of in total.
In 2021, the NPS had 297,115,406 visits and over 1.3 billion hours spent by those visitors in the National Park system.
That's a lot of people spending time visiting these landmarks, battlefields, memorials, monuments, preserves, trails and parks all across the country and in US territories outside of the continental US.
When you have visitor numbers like that, you're guaranteed to have accidents and incidents that need the assistance of search and rescue crews. Numbers released from 2018-2020 by NPS, said there were thousands of cases where the S&R teams needed to be called out.
When you break down the numbers, Yellowstone and Grand Teton, fall in the top 10 of parks with that needed search and rescue.
Yellowstone comes it at #4, with 371 incidents and Grand Teton is at #8 with 224. Again, these numbers are over a two year period and there were over 4 million each year visit Yellowstone and over 3 million visiting Grand Teton.
Grand Canyon NP was number one on the list with 785, there are around 5 million visits each year.
California held spots 2 & 3 on the list. Yosemite NP had 732 S&R incidents and Sequoia and Kings Canyon NPs had 503.
If you look at the numbers it's easy to see that when mountains are involved, visitors get in over their heads fairly easy and need help getting out.
NPS Most Search and Rescue by Outforia
California lead for the state with the most incidents with 1,868. Followed by Arizona, Utah, Nevada and Wyoming rounding out the top 5 with 618 total.
NPS Most Search and Rescue by Outforia