Woman dies after falling 60ft from cliff in Great Smokey Mountain National Park | EUROtoday

A 65-year-old lady has died after falling from a 60-foot cliff-edge within the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

The hiker was strolling the Alum Cave Trail, south of Gatlinburg, Tennessee on 28 March when the incident occurred.

Rangers responded after receiving experiences a girl had fallen, however they had been unable to resuscitate her.

On Monday, the park was nonetheless making an attempt to contact the lady’s subsequent of kin, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported.

As of 31 March, park authorities had not but launched the lady’s identify.

Great Smokey is the most-visited nationwide park within the United States, with 11.5 million guests within the 2025, in keeping with the National Parks Service.

It spans a half-million distant and mountainous acres alongside the North Carolina-Tennessee border and hosts a bit of the two,200 mile-long Appalachian Trial.

Alum cave path follows a 4.6 mile path and winds previous Alum Cave Bluffs and thru Arch Rock.

The National Park Service cautions hikers on their web site that the path can develop into very steep because it results in Mount LeConte, which attracts hundreds of thousands of holiday makers yearly.

A day earlier, on Friday, two park guests had been hospitalized after huge boulders smashed into their automobile throughout an sudden rockslide, in keeping with the Charlotte Observer.

The two automobile occupants sustained severe accidents however are anticipated to outlive.

The loss of life on Saturday is the fifth within the Great Smoky Mountains National Park this 12 months, in comparison with 16 deaths in 2025 and 9 2024.

“Fatal injuries occur every year in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Motor vehicle accidents and drownings are the leading causes of death,” the park mentioned on their web site.

In 2024, the it ranked fourth on a listing of probably the most harmful nationwide parks within the U.S, recording a complete of 104 fatalities between July 2013 and July 2023.

More than a 3rd of those fatalities concerned motor automobiles, with most occurring in September.

The park’s web site additionally warns of venomous snakes, stream crossings, and – even in summer time – hypothermia.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park was established in 1934 by the U.S. Congress and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983.

It was the primary nationwide park to be half funded by the federal authorities; parks beforehand being run and maintained with solely state funds or non-public contributions.