ACADIA NATIONAL PARK – Long periods of wet weather in the summer can affect park visitation in at least two ways.

It can result in high numbers of people entering and using the park when the weather clears, and it can make hiking trail conditions wet and slippery.

Those two factors kept park rangers and other emergency personnel on Mount Desert Island busy Wednesday afternoon as three hikers had to be carried out of the park to waiting ambulances after they lost their footing and fell, hurting their legs. The most serious injury was a broken leg, according to rangers, but the effort to help the hikers out of the woods took up most of the afternoon for nearly 20 people.

The first incident was reported around 12:30 p.m., according to Ranger Therese Picard. She said Ceclia Wrobel, 61, of Fall River, Mass., was hiking on the Bubble Pemetic Trail, which connects the summit of Pemetic Mountain to Bubble Rock parking lot on Park Loop Road, when she slipped on the trail and twisted her ankle.

“It’s a very steep trail and very slick from all the rain,” Picard said.

About 18 park rangers and members of Mount Desert Island Search and Rescue climbed the trail to where Wrobel was, and after putting her leg in a splint, strapped her into a litter that they then carried down the mountain. On two sections of the trail, they tied the litter to a rope and then belayed her down with members of the response team holding the litter as they eased their way down the steep mountainside.

Before they got to the bottom, another call came in about a man, believed to be in his 70s, who was hiking near Beech Mountain along trails that overlook Echo Lake, according to Ranger Richard Rechholtz. Rechholtz did not have the man’s name, but said he believed he has been camping at Seawall Campground near Southwest Harbor.

The man lost his footing on relatively flat terrain and fell, breaking his leg, Rechholtz said. He was carried out fairly easily, without the use of ropes, before being taken by ambulance to Mount Desert Island Hospital in Bar Harbor.

Back at Pemetic Mountain, rescuers had just loaded Wrobel onto an ambulance, which took her to MDI Hospital, when a man walked into the parking lot from the same Pemetic Mountain trail around 4 p.m. and asked for help for his wife. She too had fallen and twisted her ankle.

“That last steep section is pretty nasty, especially when it’s wet,” Rechholtz said.

The responders went back up the trail, tended to Ruth Cotton, 49, of Wilmington, N.C., and carried her out the same way they rescued Wrobel. Cotton also was taken by ambulance to MDI Hospital.

“When it rains, it pours,” Davin O’Connell, a member of MDISAR, said to a colleague as they helped carry out Cotton. He was referring to the number of rescues in the park Wednesday, but may as well also have been talking about the recent weather.

Rechholtz said that the wet weather was “very much a contributing factor” to the injuries. He said that with the number of people hiking in the park Wednesday, park officials kept extra rangers and rescue team members on standby in case they were needed elsewhere, which they were.

“This time of year, when it’s this busy, you don’t put everyone in one basket,” Rechholtz said.

Rechholtz commended the effort of members of MDISAR in responding to the incidents, especially that of O’Connell, who oversaw two of the rescue efforts.

“He did an outstanding job,” Rechholtz said.