The incident commander was Chief Ranger Howard Parish, a 52-year-old career National Park Service employee from Jackson, Wyoming, who wore his gray green uniform with the rigid formality of someone who understood that formality was a tool of order.
And order was what you needed when people were afraid. He organized the search into four operational zones extending south from Tower Junction through the Canyon Village sector, east toward the Lamar Valley drainage, west across the plateau toward Norris, and southeast along the Yellowstone River corridor toward Hayden Valley.
He had at peak deployment 47 personnel committed to the search, 22 park rangers, [music] eight seasonal interpretive staff reassigned to ground operations, six volunteers from the Cody Mountain Rescue Team, a fourperson team from the Wyoming National Guard equipped with infrared spotting equipment, and seven members of the Gallatin County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue Unit from Bosezeman.
The terrain did not cooperate. The plateau north of the canyon village area sits at approximately 8,000 ft of elevation and the forest there is dense lodge pole.
