Wary Visitors Return Slowly as Yosemite Area Reopens : Crime: Authorities believe suspect in shooting of a ranger has left the park.

With the dog teams called off, the search helicopter grounded and the failed manhunt at an end, vacationers returned--slowly and cautiously--to Tuolumne Meadows on Saturday, where a park ranger had been wounded three days before.

An armed assailant who fired three times at ranger Kim Aufhauser in the darkness of Tioga Pass road Wednesday night was still at large but authorities said Saturday they believe the suspect is outside the well-traveled park.

“We feel we’ve reduced the possibility of the suspect being in the area,” said park ranger Kris Fister. “It’s safe enough for visitors to return.”

And return they did--but with some trepidation.

On the surface, the scene along California 120 was typical of a busy weekend in Yosemite, the third-most-visited national park in the nation. Motor homes and tour buses chugged smokily up Tioga Pass Road, which was opened to traffic at 6 a.m. Saturday after an extensive hunt for Aufhauser’s assailant caused the two-day blockade.

Tourists in cowboy hats and ball caps flashed pale legs and video cameras at every picnic ground and vista point along the highway. But Tuolumne Meadows Lodge and campgrounds were quiet early Saturday and management reported cancellations because of the incident.

“A few (visitors) asked about safety,” said lodge Assistant Manager Andrew Gilmore. “We’ve already found a couple (of visitors) have canceled. One was a homicide detective who said he wasn’t going to bring his family up here until the guy is behind bars. Those were his words.”

About 1,200 visitors and employees were evacuated from the lodge and campgrounds, as authorities searched the backcountry for the fugitive. The search party, which grew from 120 to 180 before being called off, was housed in the lodge. And on Saturday morning, the housekeeping staff rushed to prepare the facility’s tent cabins for new visitors. A full house was expected by evening.

Brenda Jerdee from Asheville, N.C., arrived at the lodge Saturday morning to use the showers after a night’s camping in Yosemite Valley. Jerdee and her husband were in San Francisco on Thursday when the manhunt began and were confronted with a sign at the San Francisco Visitor’s Bureau that proclaimed--wrongly--”Yosemite Park Closed.”

“They said there’s a sniper up there shooting people and the whole park is closed,” Jerdee said. Once she and her husband found out the real story, “We still came. I figure I’m kind of safe.”

At Tuolumne Meadows Store, where business was slow, worker Jan Sudomier spent the morning fielding questions about the shooting.

Shoppers Elizabeth and David Fagerberg of Minnesota said--like many other visitors--that they knew of the manhunt, came to Tuolumne Meadows anyway, but felt unsettled.

“I find it pretty spooky,” Elizabeth Fagerberg said. “Last year, we were in the Grand Canyon when they had a hostage situation. We’ve been in Israel when there were terrorists. But here I wasn’t expecting to find so many rangers and rifles.”

Fister said that security in the area has been greatly increased, with 18 to 20 rangers on the road patrols, up from the usual three to four. And the rangers were everywhere Saturday, in cars, on horseback and on foot.

Authorities released a list of possible suspects Saturday--with a strong warning that there was very little evidence connecting any of the three men to the shooting of Aufhauser, who was released from the hospital Thursday after being treated for a leg wound. His condition is improving but he remains “shaken,” Fister said.

One of the suspects is James Steven Robinson, 39, who is being sought for allegedly murdering his ex-wife’s boyfriend on Wednesday, Fister said. He has been a suspect since Thursday.

New to the list on Saturday was Robert Allen Sloan, 38, whose girlfriend in San Francisco called the FBI. The woman, whose name was not released, told FBI agents that Sloan told her, “You’ll read about me in the papers from Yosemite.”

Sloan, who weighs 210 pounds, sports a brown ponytail, has a fondness for jewelry with skulls on it and wears a prairie dog paw around his neck was allegedly suicidal after a lover’s quarrel, Fister said.

A third suspect, whose identity is not known, is a lone hiker spotted in the backcountry by backpackers.

Fister said hikers were lined up at 6:30 a.m. Saturday for backcountry passes, unconcerned that the gunman had not been found.

Richard Newton of Orange was one backpacker who hoped to patch up his disrupted trek to Lake Tahoe.

“Now we can go back to the peace and quiet we were seeking in the first place,” Newton said.