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Following the Trail
After leaving home that March morning, Misha rendezvoused with her team of six other handlers, and they headed north. A sister squad in North Carolina had been searching through the night. Misha's team would take over later that morning.Doughton Park is located in a bowl on the side of a mountain. It's traversed by heavily vegetated, treacherously steep ridges rising 2,400 feet. Rock overhangs look down into caverns snarled with wild rhododendron thickets and deadfall. Slippery moss and waterfall spray threaten footing, and thundering streams could drown out a child's cry for help.
Knowing how unforgiving the terrain was, park rangers had quickly called in search-and-rescue squads, some working with bloodhounds, from two neighboring counties to scour a 30-mile network of trails.
All they found the first day was some spilled potato chips. The chips were west of Michael's campsite along a fire road that ran deep into the park. Tactical trackers found footprints leading to another path and then to a stream about a quarter mile from the camp. It was a fairly good trail, but they lost the tracks at the creek.
As the sun began to set and the chill of an early-spring night set in, someone found the lid of a tin mess kit 100 yards upstream from where the footprints disappeared. A well-meaning but inexperienced volunteer brought the kit back to the base camp, ruining the trail for the bloodhounds.
After nightfall, a state highway patrol helicopter scanned the forest with infrared scopes. Rangers parked their biggest vehicle at the campsite, turned on the flashing lights and blasted Michael's name over a loudspeaker.
Michael had been wearing an insulated red coat and good boots, but even the searchers were falling into streams and getting wet. They continued through the night.
The next two days, results were much the same. High-angle rescue teams rappelled down cliffs to see if Michael had fallen. Divers dragged the dam at an abandoned fish hatchery with hooks and anchors. They checked logjams on creeks. They looked beneath every waterfall. On Sunday a Boy Scout sock was found in a creek. That was all. Through the night and into Monday, 566 trained rescuers searched the woods.
Misha and her teammates arrived at the staging area around 7 a.m. on Tuesday, day four. It was overrun by media trucks and satellite dishes. There was a huge mobile command center. Red Cross food tents and official vehicles were everywhere.
The team huddled with members of the North Carolina squad, who'd just returned after spending the night combing the ridges. They told Misha that the terrain was so rough, you had to go on your hands and knees much of the time. None of their dogs had found a trail of scent on the ground. Now a dog would have to pick up the missing boy's scent in the air after four days, a challenging task for even the keenest animal.
The North Carolinians did provide Misha's team with a bonus. They'd obtained an unwashed T-shirt from Michael's backpack that hadn't been touched by anyone else. They had handled it with gloves, carefully cutting it into smaller pieces and sealing them up in plastic bags.
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