A woman whose disappearance into the storm-swollen Little River in Great Smoky Mountains National Park had authorities fearing the worst turned up in good physical condition Saturday. The woman, Carla S. Manzolini, 45, of Knoxville, Tennessee, was found about 10:45 a.m. local time Saturday at the Townsend Wye, about 7 miles downstream from the point where she was last seen, park officials said.

Her appearance brought to close a bizarre incident in which the woman jumped into the river Friday afternoon while a park ranger was warning her about the swift currents.

The ranger was patrolling in his cruiser when he spotted the woman sitting on a rock at the edge of the river. "He just noticed something about her that raised a little red flag, so he pulled over and went back and talked to her," park spokesman Bob Miller said Saturday. "While he was standing there she jumps in and floats away."

The ranger responded by grabbing a "throw bag" -- basically a coiled rope used in river rescues that has a bag on one end that swimmers can grab onto -- from his cruiser, running downstream, and tossing the rope to the woman. The first time he missed his target, but the second time "it was right in front of her and she picked it up and tossed it away," said Mr. Miller.

The river, running fast, muddy, and out of its banks due to rain storms that had dropped upwards of 3 inches of rain in the drainage, quickly swept the woman downstream and out of sight. “We know that she didn’t float the river all the way, because within five minutes of her last sighting we had somebody a mile-and-a-half down river” watching for her, explained the spokesman.

At some point Ms. Manzolini got out of the river on the far side and wound up spending the night in the woods. She then walked through the woods and found the Round Top Trail, which leads to the Townsend Wye. She hiked down the trail, crossed back over the river, and into a parking area. Park volunteers who were directing traffic at the closed gate to Little River Road noticed her and notified rangers that she might be the individual they were looking for.

The woman didn't say much to rangers about her experience. “Basically all they could get out of her was that she found the trail and hiked back out," Mr. Miller said.

Ms. Manzolini, who was a little dehydrated and a little hypothermic, according to the spokesman, was taken to Blount Memorial Hospital for evaluation.