More than 70 search and rescue teams from across the country were dispatched along rivers and streams in western North Carolina. Locals helped guide searchers up the treacherous mountain terrain to look for survivors. In the week after the storm, hundreds of people were reported missing. Dozens are still missing.

Devoted to the trails and towns of Western North Carolina, a writer makes an autumn pilgrimage and finds communities profoundly changed and profoundly the same.

Twenty-six people remain unaccounted for in hard-hit North Carolina in the wake of the devastation unleashed by Hurricane Helene, officials said Monday.