Eleven members of a Boy Scout troop did not emerge from a camping area in the mountains of western North Carolina as scheduled Sunday evening, prompting an overnight search effort, local authorities said.
The eight scouts and three adult leaders from Troop 217 in Raleigh, North Carolina, were on a weekend camping trip in the Black Balsam Gap area near the Blue Ridge Parkway in southern Haywood County, according to Haywood County sheriff’s dispatcher Michael Huffman, reports cnn.com.
Their vehicles were still in the parking lot at the entrance to the campground Sunday evening, leading authorities to suspect the scouts simply camped out for another night, Huffman said.
Lisa Logan, whose husband is one of the scout leaders and son is a scout, said she has “a complete peace that they’re fine.”
“I think more likely than not what happened is they got behind in their schedule, saw they weren’t going to get out by dark, decided it was probably safer for all the boys to just stop, camp and come out in the morning,” Logan said.
Search teams were organized late Sunday night after their families in Raleigh did not hear from them after they were supposed to have begun the five-hour drive home, Huffman said.
Five search teams combing the mountainous, heavily wooded area have not found any sign of the scouts, but they have eliminated a lot of territory, according to Haywood County Emergency Services Director Greg Shuping.
Shuping said he the weather is good and he is optimistic the search will bring a happy ending soon.
Several parents were driving from Raleigh to the camping area overnight.
The area is located in North Carolina’s Pisgah National Forest and has popular hiking trails running through it.
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